Claire Mabey argues that it’s high time we stop thinking of creative work as a nice-to-have; and instead implement a basic income scheme for artists.
Back in 2023 Stuff published an article declaring that to be a writer was the number one dream job for New Zealanders. I have been thinking about this for two years. On the one hand I was charmed by the revelation – it’s my dream job, too. On the other hand, bemused: Why? What is the appeal? What do people imagine when they imagine being a writer?
Anyone could be a writer today if they really wanted to. You can write a book and upload it to the internet in just a few clicks. You can start a Substack and blat about your niche areas of interest and probably find an audience for it. The internet has liberated the dream of being a writer from paper, ink and traditional publishing houses and led to a multiplicity of writerly identities.
And yet the pervasive perception around being a writer is that it’s far from accessible. Despite the increasing democratisation of the vocation, to be a writer remains, for many, a dream, before the concept of being a writer as a job is even reached.
I am going to assume that most people are dreaming of being a successful writer, meaning that their work is financially viable. I’m also going to assume that what most people are dreaming of writing is a novel.
But what does a successful New Zealand writer look like?
The brute reality of publishing in New Zealand is that the market is small and because of that there’s not much money in it. Even if your book sells well (2,000 copies is good going) it’s unlikely you’ll break even unless you’ve also had multiple residencies and a grant to support your labour. Breaking even in this context would mean you’ve earned out your advance and are getting ongoing royalty payments until all the hours you worked on the book, including all the marketing and publicity and admin, have been paid for. Without one’s own money to spare, a “successful writing career” looks a lot like a different job entirely while writing in the early hours of the morning.
There are very few full-time writers in Aotearoa and they come in three broad categories: 1) fiction writers who have gained international success, meaning they’ve managed to sell their book in multiple territories including the US where the large market means larger returns; and, sometimes, such writers have diversified into writing for film and TV (see: Eleanor Catton and Stacy Gregg as examples); 2) alternatively and on the other end of the publishing spectrum, you’re a successful self-published writer skilled enough to write multiple, bestselling novels a year for your overseas audience, usually through Amazon; 3) you’re a ghost writer doing multiple contracts a year.
They’re broad categories but only a handful of writers (if that) would fall into each one.
Successful novelist and screenwriter, Eleanor Catton. (Photo: Ebony Lamb.)
Of the three types, really only the “jobbing” writer has any kind of ongoing stability. Publishers always need ghost writers (for celebrity and sports memoirs, for example) and they’re often the most lucrative writing contracts, at least where traditional paperback publishing is concerned, because they sell so much more (a successful ghostwritten memoir would be expected to sell upwards of 10,000 copies). On the more artistic side, the most financially viable writers I know are self-published authors with multiple pen names who sell their books via Amazon to a largely American market. But even they are only as financially viable as their audience size: and that kind of audience needs to be fed a steady diet of product, which often means churning out 4–5 books a year.
As for that first, most desired category (local bestseller with international representation – like Catherine Chidgey), I suspect many New Zealanders believe domestic household names can also make a living. But the household names with the traditionally published books you see in shop windows and awards lists and print reviews are in a constant cycle of hustling freelance contracts, residencies and grants to buy writing time; or they’re simply writing outside of their fulltime other work.
While the commercial side is unviable on its own, it’s also increasingly hard to get grants and residencies because funding has decreased while competition has increased. Funding has dried up because Creative New Zealand hasn’t had a boost in income for decades: it’s hardly even kept up with inflation while demands on their funds are at an historic high. The government’s investment in CNZ – where every hopeful novelist in the country applies for money to write – is currently $16.689 million. Literature will get a very small percentage of that total. By way of comparison, High Performance Sport New Zealand is investing $163 million to prepare athletes (who can’t make a living from their sport) for four years in the lead up to the next Olympic Games.
Successful novelist Catherine Chidgey, who writes in the morning before her other work begins, seven days a week. (Photo: Ebony Lamb).
The main reason for that lack of investment (despite the government saying it wants to develop the export market and talent pipelines in an arts strategy that does not include any cash) is, in part, to do with the ongoing and terrific tension between art as a vocation and art as a profession; and, entangled in that, a general atmosphere that insinuates that art isn’t legitimate, or valuable, work.
On the one hand art should be part of everyday life: everyone should have access to it, practice it. Art is good for you, like going for a walk or playing social netball is good for you. Doing a painting, scribbling out your innermost thoughts, composing a story, picking out a tune on a gat with your mates in the garage. That’s bloody healthy for your brain, your body and your wairua. Art is part of your god-given package as a human and it should be cultivated in us just as much as sport.
On the other hand it’s the work of professional artists that feeds participation in art. A book, a painting, a play, a song, a film. You need professionals to set a standard, create beauty, strive for excellence, show the way, build a world.
It’s just that in New Zealand we seem to have a chronic struggle with the very idea of a professional artist. If you do manage to get a grant to write your novel you’re probably going to get some side-eye if not outright harassment by the likes of the Taxpayers’ Union. The pervasive attitude of full-time art work being “inaccessible” in my opinion is directly related to a perception that art shouldn’t be paid for because it isn’t real work. It relates to the toxic view that art = indulgence; or, even worse, art = irrelevant.
In this environment – financial scarcity on one end and side-eye on the other – what happens is only people with both financial and psychological space can pursue their creative calling.
If writing is not funded and requires the means (finance, time) to undertake it alone, who is creating New Zealand’s literary canon?
In 2025 there will be 16 literary novels and short story collections traditionally (meaning, by a local branch of a commercial publisher for the domestic market) published in New Zealand. Of those 16 only two are written by people of colour. Zooming out, since 2000, five people of colour have won the fiction award at the Ockhams. You could argue that 20% is a near reflection of the population (32.8% of the population are people of colour) and leave it there. However I think this would too easily overlook intersectional and systemic issues that limit who is able to write (and therefore, what we are able to read).
In New Zealand we have rising wealth inequality; systemic racism; chronic ableism; and a colonially skewed arts valuation system. All of those things cloud psychological space: the more immediate and pressing threats a person has, the harder it is to focus on long-form literature, like the novel, which requires stretches of focussed time and relentless motivation. Even if you take money out of the equation, the local and global political environment gives rise to inequalities when it comes to having psychological space.
I am a traditionally published novelist. I have a couple of part-time jobs, a child and a supportive partner (also an artist). I can’t say I don’t worry about money or that I can give adequate space for my creative work. But what I don’t have to worry about is attacks on my language and my culture; I don’t have to fight the system for my basic needs to be met; I don’t have to worry about affording a place to live or food to eat; I don’t have to think about caregiving for multiple dependents; and I don’t, often, have to battle with people who suggest that taking time to write is a selfish or indulgent thing to do in the face of everything else.
So what do we do about it? How do we make these dreams come true?
What I am about to propose is so unlikely in this current political atmosphere, that I’m almost too weary to speak it. But in the ideal world what we would have is an artist basic income scheme. Yes there would be argy-bargy on who could qualify. And yes why not just the universal basic income. But let me, for a moment, imagine what it would be like if we were a country that wanted to find the best artists in the same way we want to find the best All Blacks.
Who would suddenly find the headspace to write? What would the literature of Aotearoa look like?
In Ireland, that island of arts investment, they’ve been trialing a basic income scheme since 2022. Two thousand artists and art workers are being given 325 euros a week (the equivalent of NZD$650) until February 2026. To nobody’s surprise the scheme has proven to boost production and ease the stresses of those receiving it.
Money buys time, buys brain space. Receiving money offers validation and temporary relief. It buys work.
I’m really sick of art being seen as an indulgence. It’s been proven that that attitude is bullshit across all measures: for daily life, art is as necessary as fruit, veg and exercise; for the GDP, have a go at counting to $17.5 billion.
None of this answers the question of who can write a novel in 2025. I know what’s being published but I don’t know how many people are working at the kitchen table after the kids are in bed, hoping they’re writing the next winner of the Jann Medlicot Prize for Fiction (which comes with $65,000 and would effectively fund your next novel).
However, based on what I know about the time and psychological space it takes to finish a book, I suspect that the majority of writing is being done by people who a) don’t have their psychological space taken up with fighting for their basic needs and rights; b) have financial support; c) have decided to shake the perception that what they’re doing is an indulgence and is, instead, an exercise in spiritual and intellectual enrichment in a world that is increasingly ready to forget that that’s what sets humans apart from pretty much everything else.
So, for all of you still dreaming of being a writer, perhaps what you’re dreaming of is the conditions you need – the a,b,c I just listed above – to make it real. May the force be with you all.