No One's Bitches.

This is something that's been bugging me for a while: why do people feel like it's okay to tell authors to not do anything but write?

I had dinner with family last night, and I explained to them a concept that we should all be familiar with: George R. R. Martin is not your bitch.  (If you haven't read that, please do so.  I won't mind; you're better off reading Neil Gaiman than me anyway.  :P )  To my aunt's and uncle's and distant-relation-by-their-marriage's credit, they also thought there was something pretty wrong with a person's "fan" demanding they get back to work on what that "fan" wants them to work on.

So now I'm wondering: why do people do that?  And why only to authors?

Granted, I don't read everything on the internet; I lack the time and brain capacity and spare sanity for that.  But I've never seen someone tell an actor to stop tweeting and get back on stage or set.  I've never seen someone tell an artist to put their phone down and pick up their pencil or brush or stylus.  I've never seen someone ask a director or a photographer why they're not behind the camera, or a model why they're not in front of it.

But I've seen people respond to writers' tweets with the oh-so-cute "Shouldn't you be writing?"  I've seen people rage at authors for doing interviews or other press instead of writing.  And clearly not everyone got Mr. Gaiman's message, as shown by the jackass who responded to Mr. Martin's SDCC tweet with "GET BACK TO WORK!!!!"

And that was only one of three different responses that amounted to "You're doing something that's not writing, you shouldn't be."  One was supposedly from an editor, who should know better.

Writing is a job like any other.  And expecting someone to do their job every waking hour of their day is not only selfish, it's damn stupid.  People who ask authors why they're not writing clearly don't understand that downtime is necessary - for a lot of us, the best parts of creating come when we're out and about, when we're not staring at the screen or notebook, when we're doing something other than writing.  Why so many people seem incapable of realizing this, I don't know.

For the record, I still get some of my best ideas in the shower.  And I don't care how successful I might someday become, I'm not giving up showering.

I've written before about how the only thing the writer owes the reader is the best damn story they can tell.  I linked to Mr. Gaiman's phrase in that entry too, and I'll keep bringing it up until people get the idea.  If you want your favorite writers to do the best they can do, you don't tell them what to do.  You encourage them, you appreciate them, you tell others about them.  But you damn sure don't act like they're doing something wrong because they're not doing what you want.

We are, collectively, no one's bitches.  Deal with it.