Danielle Steel airs grievances on her blog - Los Angeles Times
Advertisement

Danielle Steel airs grievances on her blog

Share via

Danielle Steel has written 130 books and is by all accounts a success, but she still deals with condescension from men at dinner parties.

The 65-year-old Steel took to her blog to write a post, “Are you still a Brain Surgeon?” where she details her experiences with men who belittle her writing career, and those of her female entrepreneur friend.

According to Steel, the situation happens this way: She will run into a man that she hasn’t seen for awhile. He will immediately ask, “So, are you still writing?” And this question is where the author goes off.

Advertisement

She writes that it’s “an immediate put-down. It is a way of suggesting what I do is really not very important. Women NEVER ask me that question. But SOME men do.”

“Yes, I am STILL writing,” reports Steel, who published “First Sight,” a novel set against the backdrop of the fashion world last month, noting: “What this does is that it immediately puts my writing into the category as a hobby. As in, are you still taking piano lessons, doing macrame, have a parrot?”

Steel continues, “It’s my work, my job, how my family eats and went to college… I have written 130 books that are sold in 69 countries in 43 languages.”

Advertisement

She’s being modest: She is also one of the bestselling authors alive, with over 800 million books sold. But as she points out, “I never say to guys, ‘So are you still a lawyer? … A doctor? … A brain surgeon?’

She closes with some excellent romantic advice: “Ladies, watch out for the men who resent the kind of work you do and make nasty comments.”

ALSO:

Advertisement

Could the movie version of ‘The Book Thief’ be a sleeper hit?

Public libraries and the ‘big six’ publishers fighting over e-books

Watch Daniel Radcliff as Allen Ginsberg in ‘Kill Your Darlings’ trailer

Advertisement