Writers need to eat: the crushing poverty of a life in the arts

Like so many young Australians, my life is a subscription service. My dream of buying a decent place where I live is unrealistic; simply renting and keeping it together is already a struggle.

Cadance Bell would very much like to make a living as an author. She can barely make rent.

I am writing this essay as a way to get the word out on my new book, Letters to Our Robot Son. I would like you to buy it, not only because it’s a ripper of a tale, but also because I need some stability in my life; I need to work towards a home.

Like so many young Australians, my life is a subscription service. My dream of buying a decent place where I live, in Bathurst NSW, is unrealistic; simply renting and keeping it together is already a struggle.

Letters to Our Robot Son by Cadance Bell

My back-up plan is to buy a run-down shack somewhere remote – Coolah, Dunedoo, Coonabarabran … something in the sticks my fiancee and I might find for under $200k, something an author these days could afford, even if it has an outside toilet. Grow some food, raise some chickens, argue with the cats. I just need to own land, to own something.

Poverty is a madness engine, second only to the loss of hope. The grind kills my productivity.

For a time, we explored buying a cheap property in Italy or Spain, but I want to keep telling stories here in Australia, because I’m good at it. I’ve dedicated my entire life to it, and my voice is uniquely Australian.

Letters to Our Robot Son is set in the Blue Mountains and Sydney region. The book follows a sweet little robot named Arto as he explores a post-human Australia, guided by a mysterious letter from ghosts he knows only as “the Mum and the Dad”. When he stumbles upon another sentient robot named Indi, she claims to be his sister. The trouble being: Arto begins to suspect she might be the reason there are no more people.

It’s an epic Aussie sci-fi story about family, artificial intelligence and, above all, hope.

Now, I’m just a ragamuffin shithead from the bush; I’m not the sort of person who gets to be a full-time artist, which is precisely why I must be one.

When I first started dating my fiancee Amanda seven years ago, I warned her that a life with me would never be easy, but it would always be interesting.

Letters To My Robot Son is part of a new world created by Cadance Bell.

I shared with her my fears for the future, specifically that I expected humanity to face great pain during the rise of artificial intelligence, and that Australia would need resilient artists to guide the nation, because storytelling is at the root of all civilisation.

I have spent 20 years this year building the wider world of Letters to Our Robot Son.

It is the first in a grand series, The Heart Saga, which seeks to help my country understand the immense change we are experiencing as a society: capitalism and democracy as we know them are dying.

Institutions are failing, traditions are being erased, communities torn apart, and the relentless march of technology is at the centre of it all.

Technopolists like Elon Musk, Sam Altman and Mark Zuckerberg are our new lords, and they have already stolen much of the world. It’s not happening, it has happened. The lionhearted journalist Carole Cadwalladr recently described it as a coup, and I believe she’s right.

To be clear: most artificial intelligence is designed to replace people; the glory of its efficiency is a synonym for job losses.

Against these tides I have still dared to write a techno-optimistic book because it’s not too late to protect working-class Australians, to change our story.

Yet at precisely the moment we need them most, Australia’s artists are being decimated.

When I began developing Letters to Our Robot Son, 55 per cent of our country’s artists practised their craft full time. As of last year that number is now falling below 9 per cent.

We learned during the Covid-19 pandemic that artists were least essential, and governments of all persuasions have since failed to ameliorate that. I have creative friends who can’t afford basic medical expenses. Others are at risk of homelessness, even as we circulate money to one another through Patreon, Substack and Fourthwall.

Australia is starving its artists so that few are left to inspire us all, and to speak truth to power in these turbulent times.

The systems of creative financing in Australia encourage the same race to mediocrity we see in our politicians. Our screen productions are frequently damp squibs, writers festivals are operating on fumes, successful music festivals are mythical. I doubt anyone would say that Creative Australia has showered itself in glory of late; its board appears to exist to satiate its own obstinance and ego. It is fearful of, if not beholden to, politicians. This is the antithesis of art, because art is the truth of freedom.

To survive such a world, my fiancee and I determined years ago to live on only two meals a day, though some days we starve. We try not to use heating or cooling, we haven’t taken a holiday since 2019 and we are years overdue for dental checkups, even as we rinse and reuse our floss. We can’t afford a wedding. Our future looks grim; we drained all our superannuation to survive the pandemic. The reality that we will likely never own our own home fills me with malignant dread.

At the same time, my body has become a political battleground. Since the release of my popular memoir, The All of It: A Bogan Rhapsody in 2022, which was shortlisted for The Age Book of the Year, I have attracted two stalkers. The most recent was sentenced to three months jail in March after repeatedly masturbating outside my bedroom window.

More recently I have been dumped from a number of screen productions and US-based projects, both because it’s no longer safe for me to travel to the United States, and because of pressure from the Trump administration for organisations to disassociate from gender-diverse people like me.

None of this dark malarkey has persuaded me to give up. Indeed, nothing ever will. Writing is my calling, it is what I must do with my life to be at home in myself, and to honour my fellow Australians. I will not give up on working-class Aussies.

If I should die in pursuit of this duty, then I will die with love and purpose in my heart and a pencil in my hand. I dare you to buy Letters to Our Robot Son, and to support our artists in this fight for the story of our country.

About the author

Cadance Bell is an Australian author, showrunner, producer, director and writer. Her memoir, The All of It: A Bogan Rhapsody, published by Penguin in July 2022, was shortlisted for The Age Book of the Year. Her latest book is Letters to Our Robot Son. Her documentary films include The Rainbow Passage for Network 10 and Screen Australia. She lives in New South Wales with her fiancee, Amanda.