500 GBP and a room of my own

Some time during the last century, possibly while I was doing my masters degree in 1988, I read Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own.  Shortly thereafter, I started rereading Jane Eyre (the good bits) because I was trying to write my final paper for the Bloomsbury Group course I was taking (Virginia Woolf was part of the group) and I had no idea what the hell I was going to write my paper on so why not read Jane Eyre instead is generally my motto when faced with something I don't particularly want to do.

Anyway, in 1928, Woolf wrote that in order to be a writer a woman needed to have money (she reckoned about £500 per annum) and a room of her own.  This struck me so forcefully at the time that I have taken it at gospel ever since.

Her book was an answer to all those idiots who kept wondering why there was no female Shakespeare and so few women writers in the canon at all.  Back in her day and mine, the university bookstore shelves were stuffed full with the novels, plays, and poetry of dead white men, with a few above-the-sod white men thrown in for variety and the occasional bone tossed to Jane Austen or one of the Bronte sisters (but not Anne*). 

When I had started my masters, I had to drop a course on early women writers because none of the books were in print and I was faced with having to compete with 15 other students for the one or two copies to be found in one of the multitude of libraries scattered around the University of Toronto campus. This was back when the library's computerized catalogue could tell you where the book was but not that the book was already checked out until you had trudged all the way over there.

Of course, I didn't really need Virginia to tell me I needed money to support my writing habit.  Having reached the tender age of 26 with no clear career goals other than "be a writer" in my head and having rejected a journalism career after a stressful six months of learning that being a journalist meant you had no time to write anything other than news stories, I was casting about myself to see what else I could do to keep myself in lined paper. This was before personal computers and the internet could provide the opportunity for you to blog your guts out to the world for (mostly) free.

My year in Toronto made it clear to me that being an English professor was not for me either.

So I went back home to Newfoundland, working at the university library for a few years until sheer boredom led me on to working as a copyright officer for a lot of years until sheer boredom led me to retire as soon as the countdown on my days-to-retirement clock had reached zero plus a few extra weeks thrown in to get things in order for the winter semester.

Things weren't actually in quite the order I had hoped for but it's hard to concentrate on the daily grind when "why not read Jane Eyre or the internet or that e-book that I had on hold but is now on my phone" is generally my motto.**

Did you know that if you put an e-book on hold at the NL provincial library, it automatically downloads to your account the minute it becomes available?  Did the productivity of all former English majors in the province dramatically decrease when that became a thing?***

Getting back to Virginia's book, her thesis was that a writer needs financial security, space, and time to get any writing done but getting the money you need to get the space you need and to maintain the space you need and to feed and clothes the kids you end up having if you marry the money you need or you keep working but have to be a superwoman-who-has-it-all eats away at the time you need to actually do anything except work, eat, raise kid(s), drive kid(s) to all their activities, watch TV, read books (hah!), and sleep. 

And maybe Anthony Trollope could get up at 5:30 a.m. and write for three hours before going off to work and produce 47 novels in 35 years but I bet bloody Anthony Trollope never changed a diaper or had to deal with a half-day kindergarten schedule that changed every two weeks or lived during the Golden Age of Television. Given the reality of most women's lives especially before there were many ways for them to earn money outside of marriage, it's amazing that any of them got into print at all.

Despite what I said above, my career in copyright wasn't always boring.  It could be a real roller coaster ride sometimes, with periods of intense activity followed by great lulls while you wait for the next semester to ramp up.

I got to create presentations about copyright and stand up in front of people telling them things they didn't know about stuff I knew backwards and forwards because I'd been doing it for so long, which is quite cool if you are a bit of a show off.

So many interesting things to read came across my desk all needing copyright clearance.  I was supposed to be concerning myself with just the copyright but how can you not read something called "How to Display Data Badly" or a scholarly article on the awesomeness that is Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Did you know that the berries Newfoundlanders call Bake Apples got that name because the French who came here back in the early days called them "baie qu'appelle" meaning "I don't know what to call this berry but my god it's some tart" and the English who came here back in the day misheard.

On the other hand, books and articles about copyright law are usually a surefire cure for insomnia (except for my copyright article in the Gazette, of course).  It is amazing how thinking about the rules which protect the art works that inspire our imaginations can stamp out all signs of life in the prose concerning those rules.

Of course, copyright protects boring stuff too or I would never have gotten any work done.**

It was while I was writing my not-at-all-boring article (that I got loads of compliments on so you should read it, too, right after this post) that it suddenly hit me that in a few short years I could be doing this full time.  I could create copyright stuff just as boring and maybe just as entertaining as other people. I already had the room; I would soon have the £500.

And so here I am today in front of a computer writing this word. And this one, too. Hoping that someone will read them. Dreaming that someday someone might pay me for them. But mostly just hoping someone will read them.

Either way, this is my new job and so far I'm loving it.  

I am a woman, I am a writer, and I am in print.

*Anne Bronte is brilliant by the way and you should finally get around to reading her very soon and not leave her sitting on your shelf in your complete Bronte sisters collection like an idiot (aka me) for years on end

**Can you get fired retroactively after you retire?

***Could they dock your pension or something?  Asking for a friend...