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I was at a housewarming party once when a friend of a friend confidently introduced himself to me as a mate of so-and-so, and a model.
I was at a housewarming party once when a friend of a friend confidently introduced himself to me as a mate of so-and-so, and a model.
He was tall and tanned and handsome and I believed him immediately, had no reason or inclination not to. We got chatting over drinks and bowlfuls of crisps, and as he talked it emerged that he’d only had one modelling gig that had been either unpaid or landed because he knew someone; in any case, it seemed to me suddenly so outrageously, wonderfully bold of him to, without hesitation, call himself a model. I was stunned and enraptured by it. He’d modelled hadn’t he? He was a model.
When it came to talking about me, though, I found I couldn’t muster the same level of self-assuredness. Instead, as I always did, I mumbled out something like: “I’m sort of a writer, well, not sort of, I’m a freelance writer, but I mostly work on, like, trade publications and stuff, though I have been published once or twice in the Guardian which is pretty cool and…”
Listening to myself, every word sounded like an apology. Why wasn’t I capable of saying, as he had about being a model, “I’m a writer”. It wouldn’t have been untrue, after all. I literally was.
But I still felt that the title belonged to someone, somewhere, more experienced than me. What I imagined in my head that “a real writer” would look like. It had always been situated somewhere ahead of me, a future goal, and every time I thought I’d reached it it would only seem further away.
Maybe no amount of books is enough to ever make someone feel like an author, or feel they have a right to that title. Maybe it’s because I’ve been a published author for literally like a week, and it hasn’t sunk in yet
I even had a book deal, at this point. The whole thing was still in its very nascent stages, but a contract had been signed and in less than two years I knew I’d have written a book with my name on the front of it available for purchase. Maybe then I’d feel as confident as my new friend was in calling himself a model, in calling myself a writer.
My book was finally published last Thursday by HarperNorth, an imprint of HarperCollins, and the entire experience has been wonderfully exciting. But I’ve also struggled with the self-promotional aspect of the thing, feeling extremely annoying and, as I had felt with my model friend, strangely apologetic.
A post by author Emma Gannon helped pull me through. She wrote on Instagram: “Many male authors I know and admire will talk about their work often and with pride. They will say “I made this and it is good” ... Permission slip granted. Promote your book.”
Maybe it is a gendered thing, I’m sure there’s definitely some truth in that, but whatever the case, I still for some reason don’t feel I have a right to call myself an “author”. “Writer” I’m getting better at, but “author” still feels like a label that belongs to someone else, not me. Maybe it’s a quality somewhat inherent to being a writer, too. As Jami Attenberg writes in her recent memoir I Came All This Way to Meet You: Writing Myself Home: “I knew that I would live with a certain kind of heartache forever, that it had been ingrained in me since birth somehow.” Maybe no amount of books is enough to ever make someone feel like an author, or feel they have a right to that title. Maybe it’s because I’ve been a published author for literally like a week, and it hasn’t sunk in yet.
In any case it’s strange how the goalposts move. I thought “when the book comes out, then I’ll be able to call myself an author”, as though authors of unpublished works aren’t authors. Even I see how wrong and ridiculous that sounds. But nevertheless, an internal voice still tells me: “You can’t call yourself an author if you only have one book. Stupid. You need at least to have two.”
For what it’s worth, I’m at least aware of the pattern of thinking now; highlighted to me so boldly by my new model friend, the encounter with which still inspires me to this day. The audacity, the brilliant, enviable audacity. Now, when I’m asked, I’ve been trialling saying “author” when people I’ve just met ask me what I do. It catches on my tongue, but I say it anyway.
Lauren Brown is a writer, journalist and author of Hands: An Anxious Mind Unpicked (Harper North, 2022). You can find her on Twitter @laurenrbrown95.