The lovely Rachel Cochrane from Listen up North has recently posted about her collaboration with photographer James Sebright – Nissan Thirty Years On, a wonderful exhibition, well worth visiting, now in situ at The Oriental Museum in Durham. She describes how on the evening of the opening Curator Dr Craig Barclay described her as a ‘word artist.’
Rachel says, ‘I think I might just adopt that description as I have been struggling with what to call myself for some time because the title ‘writer’ doesn’t really cover everything I do.’
This set me thinking about the label ‘writer’and just how loaded and limiting it can be. Here are my 5 reasons:
1. If I call myself a writer the world questions my credentials, expects me to be published – and yet there are thousands of great writers out there who are not published, certainly not in the mainstream.
2. If I call myself a writer I put pressure on myself to get that novel done or that short story – the work has to be serious, where’s the fun?
3. If I call myself a writer I am for the most part working alone in my garret with only Twitter for company.
4. If I call myself a writer the world seems tough and it’s easy to feel like I’m failing in some way, that I just haven’t made it.
5. If I call myself a writer it seems self -limiting. Can I also be a poet?
BUT if I call myself a ‘word artist,’ freedom and collaboration beckon, boundaries dissolve and the world seems a friendlier, more open, and exciting place. After all, as I’ve often said, artists don’t have the same hang ups as writers- they put their pictures on the wall without too many second thoughts and nobody expects them to be hung in The National Gallery
I won’t deny I’m a writer – I’ve been writing all day – but I very much like the idea of adding ‘word artist’ to my imaginary CV.
What do you think? Is it just me who feels like this? I’d love to know?
I think the label ‘writer’ is far less vague than say, words such as: thinker, commentator, critic, reader. I suppose like these labels, ‘writer’ doesn’t specify what it is we write about. But nonetheless it does delineate the act of writing. I suppose what the post is getting at is, the form and content which is expected by one who avers themselves as a ‘writer’. I’m happy to keep the label, but why not destabilise, mix up and revolutionise what is expected in form and content by one labelled ‘writer’.
I’m with you – I think a mash up is called for. A