Let’s say you find yourself at a dinner party with Philip Roth. It could happen. And let’s also say you’ve avoided the major etiquette pitfalls (i.e. liver jokes), but are still wary of saying the wrong thing to a man who is, after all, a big-time writer. What does one say to a famous writer if one doesn’t want to offend, or—worse—to reemerge as an irritating minor character in his or her next work?

Last week, a Twitter hashtag—#TenThingsNotToSayToAWriter, launched by the accomplished novelist Joanne Harris—sprang up to answer the question. It’s a mostly lighthearted array of complaints from writers across genre and success level about the annoying things people ask them about their work, money included. The overarching theme of the entries was that writing is, in fact, work. While it most certainly is, there are more and less effective ways of conveying this. Pointing out that writing isn’t lounging, and ought to be compensated, helps. Scoffing at those who’d dare imagine that a published writer would have additional sources of income, not so much.

What immediately struck me was that so many of the complaints could be divided into two intertwined categories. First came the humblebrags recalling encounters with people who didn’t realize they were in the presence of one of the handful of people actually paying their bills via their literary output:

TenThingsNotToSayToAWriter So? Are you still writing or are you working now? — karenrock5

"It must be so nice to have time to write. I'd love to give up work too" #TenThingsNotToSayToAWriter — lilybaileyuk

I'm unemployed too #TenThingsNotToSayToAWriter — joshingstern

Then came other writers’ exasperated accounts of having been asked, one too many times, to work for free:

"We can't pay, but it'll be great for exposure." #TenThingsNotToSayToAWriter — jmkarmstrong

Yes, we pay our staff. No, we don't pay our writers. #TenThingsNotToSayToAWriter — profnickmount

Just think of the exposure! #TenThingsNotToSayToAWriter — karnythia

Each camp has a point, and the existence of both indicates that there’s something deeper at work here, something intrinsic to the value of writing itself. The main reason writing gets contrasted with a “real job” is that writers do very often have outside sources of income, which is not unrelated to the ubiquity of unpaid gigs. It’s led to the assumption that self-proclaimed writers are either nighttime hobbyists, independently wealthy, or unemployed people who’ve landed on a good euphemism. The greater danger comes from the myth that published writers actually are living off their writing—or, more accurately, off the bylined writing you know about. And the first use of that hashtag contributes to the myth: It makes frank discussion of what writing pays (or doesn’t) even more taboo than is already the case. It isn’t a pernicious stereotype that “writer” is rarely a job in the way that “lawyer” or “garbage-collector” are. It’s the truth. And it’s not useful for the handful of writers living entirely off their creative output to pretend as if this is the normal state of affairs.