Hey everyone,
Last year in India, we lived in the second-floor apartment of a two-storey family home. If someone came to visit they’d ring the bell from outside the gate, we’d let them in and they’d climb the steps up.
Every time we ordered food delivery, however, this very simple process became a whole lot complicated.
On the gate outside the building there was a sign that said “Beware of the Dog.” There was no dog but our landlord, who lived downstairs, put the sign up to ward off robbers. It is, in fact, commonplace in Delhi for people to put up a “Beware of the Dog” sign on their gates even if they don’t have a dog because it is widely believed that this will be a deterrent to anyone who might be thinking of breaking in.
Would-be thieves aren’t the only people scared of dogs, however. Turns out, food delivery people are, too.
I’d be standing on my second-floor balcony, yelling down to the food delivery guy that there was nothing to be scared of, that there was no dog, but there he’d stand anyway, refusing to come up, pointing at the sign, shaking his head, going, “Nope, I’m not coming up. There’s a dog.”
Fear is a powerful emotion.
It can make you refuse to listen, make you refuse to believe, make you refuse to take that step forward even when you are in no real danger for having done so.
If someone tells us there is a dog and we believe them and internalize the existence of said dog, then no matter how many more people may tell us that this dog was a work of fiction, we remain afraid.
I could take this analogy so many places, but I’m going to stick to writing.
We’ve been told so many stories about art not making money. We’ve been told so many stories about gatekeepers who hold the power to grant or deny us the right to tell our truth. We’ve been told so many stories about how impossible it is to survive, to grow, and to thrive in “today’s media environment.”
Do you know, the words they use now, the things they say now, the exact phrases they use are the same things they were saying five, ten, fifteen, twenty years ago?
I believed them, of course I did. I’m not arrogant enough to think that I know better than the thousands of writers and artists who have come before me and are generously sharing their experiences and knowledge.
But that’s what it is. Their experience and their knowledge, based on the time they lived in, based on the obstacles they overcame, based on the unique turns their lives have taken.
The role models I looked to for creative inspiration were never going to, I knew, become the role models I looked to for business acumen.
Some of them lived in different times (Virginia Woolf, anyone?), some of them lived in different countries, most of them had different backgrounds and challenges that simply did not serve as a model for a twenty-something female writer from India trying to make a living, mostly online. (Most of them were, unsurprisingly, not even online.)
My biggest challenge ended up becoming my biggest gift.
Because I knew that I was going to have to carve out a unique path in a way for myself in a way that nobody had quite done it before, I was able to put all the stories I’d been told about starving artists and low book deals and freelancers not making money to the side and just focus on how I was going to make it work for me. I came online in 2002 and believed so fully and completely that the Internet was going to be where art and writing would be done in the future that I just jumped in fully and completely, not at all (at least at the time) worrying about how my career would or could be translated offline.
The only dogs in my stories (both literally and metaphorically speaking) have been friendly ones.
Because I believed them to be.
For artists and writers, society has long put up a “Beware of the Dog” sign on the gate and a few chosen gatekeepers have been using that sign to ward us off into our little corners unless they deemed us talented, important, or connected enough to be let in. We’ve bought into it, too, scared to climb up those stairs lest we get torn apart from limb to limb by the realities of life in publishing, even though there may well be someone yelling at us from the balcony, telling us these fears can be overcome, a life in writing is not as unachievable and scary as they’ve made it out to be.
Will you have to give up old models and ways of doing things? Probably.
Will you face failure and defeat repeatedly on the climb up? Of course.
Will you have to think critically for yourself and learn to experiment, try new things, and get comfortable using technologies that you’ve never experienced before? For sure.
If you’re looking for the old models of write one book a year and get millions of people lining up for book signings while you smoke a pipe in the back of the room, I’m afraid that time has passed.
But if you’re willing to be a writer of your time, which means someone who embraces new technologies, new ideas, and new ways of creating work, someone who wants to speak to and engage with the people who read their work, then this can path can turn out well for you.
I can’t be Virginia Woolf or live in her time but why on earth would I want to?
I’m Natasha Khullar Relph, living in 2020, and that’s just as exciting a time and place to be in, too.
Cheers,
Natasha