Josh Olson (A History of Violence) is an Oscar Nomainated Screenwriter and is the author of the now infamous original essay, I Will Not Read Your Fucking Script, from The Village Voice. Josh probably doesn’t think you’re a writer, even if you think you are. Well, let’s back up a bit.
I am almost 35 years old. I have been making my living exclusively from writing for 5 years now. My first movie review was published in the fall of 2000. And I wrote my very first story, an illustrated Scooby Doo adventure, just before my 5th birthday. So my question to you is this: how long have I been a writer? The answer is: that depends. And what it depends on is what, and who, you are asking. Because Josh Olson and Film School Rejects’ Cole Abaius disagree on the definition and things got heated during a discussion at the South by Southwest Film Festival.
“Then the conversation took a turn toward what the true disagreement was, and it’s something that he and I will most likely always disagree on: the definition of a writer. Olson never called himself a writer until he got his first paycheck for doing it. He also makes no bones about sharing his disdain for people who don’t get paid yet still use the word when describing themselves – claiming that it disrespects his profession. Also, not getting paid to write makes you a schmuck. His reasoning for this is something that he could better enunciate because for all the discussion we had about it that day, I’m not really sure what it is.”
“I prefer the simpler, more classic definition. This also happens to be the actual definition. To Write is a verb. Writer is one who writes. As far as I know, there’s no talk about money in the Oxford English entry whatsoever. If you wake up in the morning and write, then you’re a writer. It’s probably too lofty of an example, but by Olson’s definition, J.D. Salinger stopped being a professional a long time ago. Royalty checks are one thing, but Salinger wrote voluminously after publishing his last short story and stored them away forever. This, according to Olson, also makes Salinger a schmuck. Doing all that hard work and never seeing a dime from it.” [FSR]
The problem is that they are both right – they’re just bickering over the answer and not the question. If the question is “What do you do for a living,” then Josh is correct. If it is “What do you do for fun,” then Abaius is. Writing is one of those rare words (ironically) that covers both the hobbyist and the professional equally, and allows far too many hobbyists to masquerade as professionals, as well as allowing the latter to be mistaken for the former.
A friend who screws around with his pipes at home is not a plumber – not if he doesn’t do it for a living. And a person who owns a boat and goes out on the lake on the weekend is not a Sailor. And the fact that I painted the entire inside of my house from white to a variety of different colors does not make me a house painter. BUT all of those delineations come from asking “What do you do for a living?” Had the question been “What do you like to do in your free time,” plumbing, sailing and interior design are all fine answers.
Many of Abaius’s friends are writers in the sense that they write, but not in that they do it for a living. After all, it is a far kinder fate for these people at a party that when asked by a pretty girl “So what do you do,” that they answer “I’m a writer,” rather than “I work in a bank” or “I’m a video store clerk.” It’s not really lying unless the question is “What do you do for a living?” Without getting too existential, a person KNOWS whether or not they are a writer, paid or not, when they answer that question.
Of course, Olson comes from the Harlan Ellison school of “plumbers with words”, in which the largest obstacle in writing comes from the fact that few want to pay what our time is worth because they point out they can always find someone willing to do it for free. Ellison argues (in the wonderful documentary on his life, Dreams with Sharp Teeth) that when you have a guy out to your house to clear a blockage or fix a toilet, you don’t say “Hey, why don’t you do this for free and once I’m convinced of how good you are, I’ll call you back for some paid work.” Try it some time. See how many plumbers you get out to your place.
But that is exactly how the blogging world works. Olson comes from a world in which he is paid several hundred thousand dollars for a few months (or sometimes weeks) work; not because he is simply that good (although he is quite good), but because there is a union in place preventing Hollywood from doing to screenwriters what the blogs do to their writers. And with that comes a firm, entrenched belief in the notion of what this is as a job, as a lifestyle – and not simply something one wishes to believe themselves to be.
It would be easy to discount Abaius simply by noting that Olson makes his living entirely off of writing while he does not; but doing so counters what I myself believe. I know that I am a writer. I have known this since I wrote that Scooby Doo story three decades ago. That it took 25 years to be able to put “writer” down on my 1040 is immaterial. But I can’t deny that the day I was able to do so I entered a completely different stage in my life and became a very different kind of writer. Abaius believes that it is in the adjective – but he believes Olson needs to add the word “professional” to the word writer, while Olson believes that others need to add the word Amateur. All I can say is: what was the question?
Be sure to check out Abaius’s great rebuttal to Olson’s points found here
