Can't help feeling there was a gendered aspect to this
Possibly fell into several Russ 'How to Suppress Women's Writing' categories.
Anyway, a woman doctor who works in palliative care in the NHS has written a memoir of her work in the early months of the pandemic -
And one might think that this is a valuable work of reportage by someone in the front line, achieved on top of their harrowing day job, raising consciousness, etc of what it's like -
And there are lots of nasty tweets in response to her 'today is publication day' tweet saying things like 'hope you're giving your profits to the NHS/charity/etc' and that it's self-promotion -
- some of which is from fellow-medics, which as some other fellow-medic pointed out, is absolutely par for the course (indeed, as a medical historian, nothing makes me larf liek drayne than assumption that medprof was massive monolithic conspiracy when they were cats in a sack) (I may also flag up, docs dobbing in other docs to the BMA for 'advertising') -
- but I do wonder if some of what's going on here is that thing whereby people think the writing isn't WORK - ('I've got a great idea for a story... it only needs someone to write it down') - that she just has to go home and transcribe what happened that day - whereas presumably there's a good deal goes into making it into a readable narrative.
'She wrote it but she was just writing down what happened'.
Also I would not be at all surprised that if she did say she was donating all profits to [Good Cause] there would be snarks that it was not the right [Good Cause].
I also think there's that thing going on whereby people think writing is much more well-remunerated than it is and she is going to be receiving wealth beyond the dreams of avarice.
But I do wonder if bloke medic did something similar there would quite the same kind of kickback and assumption that he did not somehow deserve the fruits of his labour.
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