Begrudgingly Convenient

I had a library debt.

For a book I did not damage.

A year ago.

It made me angry for a long time. Anyone who knows me knows that’s just fucking ludicrous.

In the interest of full disclosure, I had several ulterior motives for paying it. Some were not clear to me until I went to actually do so.

As a Poor Angry Writer, I love my resources. Everyone should love their library.

But the library that charged me this paltry sum of 37.00 had many other sins. That I received it damaged. It was almost as old as me. They refused to return it. I had to force them to, and THAT’S how I got the fucking charge.

It looked like an elementary school library. Most of the floor covered in half-tall shelves you see for kindergarteners. An open story time area that made mid-day unbearable. Computer space that was hidden in the back where only perverts and Mormons gathered. I have no idea what it was about that library that Mormons liked… I always had to order something over, they never had it there. And a huge section where old people would just hang out, raid coupons, read the paper for free, and leave a mess. Awkward cafeteria tables with power strips duct tapped to them for computer stations. It was terrible.

So I held a grudge.

Then it became in my best interest to pay off the scourge. So I could go to a different library. At a new job, there is a library not far, and I could easily go to that one before work, drop stuff off after close. It would be nice.

So fine, amongst the fair amount of catching up I had to do with bills and errands, fuck it, I’ll do that, too. Out of my hair, I’m an upstanding citizen. What the fuck ever.

Then I go in.

And it’s nice.

They’ve remodeled the whole thing. Sectioned off rooms. No half shelves. More floor space given up for books. I paid my fee, and went browsing. Lo and Behold, they have two lectures I’ve been wanting to hear, the Great Courses series on The Symphony and 30 Greatest Orchestral Works. Looking around, it was 37 dollars well spent. When I went to check out, I got the Oh Shit You’re Gonna Expire, Mate!!!

The last staff was mean. And it sounds silly to say the word as an adult, but bitter, unhelpful, rude, and dismissive all fall under that category.

This young lady helped me cheerfully, like she was happy to work with books! And I’m fuck yeah, books!

Truth be told, I’ve missed the library. It’s invaluable.

Maybe, I could be a little less angry.

We’ll see.

Are You Working?

Writing isn’t all “ass in chair” time. That’s great work, if you can get it. Not having that, how do you justify all that…other time…

Those people with their groups and guilds and monetarily gifted household breadwinners have support, physically and emotionally, when they need Motivation and Inspiration to keep working.

I got to come home three hours early and write one day, and we were worried that little gift would cost us. We know we are operating without Time or Money, regardless of Motivation and Inspiration. So, without Time or Money, one still has to declare one’s identity as a writer.

Don’t do that.

I mean, I hate to sound negative. Artists supporting art and artists are for another time.

It’s almost like Writer is a new order of sub-human, a fucking bum that’s floats in poverty like a river, stabbing at shore until they invade a dock and mooch off of people with real jobs. It doesn’t matter what you do. This is how you will be seen. Some things that have actually happened: I’ve had people laugh in my face and walk away. The ever-present wild animal horn-lock statement, “have you been published.” The ones that hurt the worst came from close to home, if not directly from home. “Why isn’t your book done yet? You must just sit there and stare at the screen. Anyone can write a book.” Direct quote. I’ve had the word “artist” spit at me with such venom because I wouldn’t sell my book instantly. I let someone use one of my stories for their college course. They didn’t have to do their final, and I would have actual feedback. Which I never got. Instead they told me they were meant to be a writer, they had a dream that told them so.

So don’t bother telling anyone. I’m lucky that my spouse has been constantly supportive.

But I only said “writer” once at the place I’m working at. I never mentioned it again, and I don’t talk about it. When I say work, they think I mean laundry, and I don’t have to see the looks on faces of people who built their lives on shore instead of braved the waters.

Now you have to have a Social Identity. For lack of interaction I get in real life, I have to work for it online. One of two things will happen: you either have to prove you have a potential fan base to an agent, or you are going to have to do all the PR work yourself. Remember when writers wrote book after book? Can’t do that anymore. You have to parade. Either an agent or the e-publisher is going to rely on me to sell myself. I gotta be the pimp and the trick. And that takes Time. Also takes Money if the service is any good.

So, you Tweet. Face the Book. Blog, as you can clearly see exhibited here for your consumption. And there’s a million more fucking ways to show off online. Seems like there is a new one every time I log on. It would take another person to add Pintrest, Vine, YouTube Vlog…It’s a full time job to support the identity of a writer online. Who the fuck am I going to pay when I’m considering doing Tarot readings for extra cash?

Somewhere, in the middle of all that shit, you write. Find your process, your voice, style, technique. Craft the frame work, POV, symbolism, realistic dialogue, relatable prose, and new ways to describe the oldest sins. Right?

Sure you have. Now you have research to do. Your character’s career is a plot point. What’s the time frame, because that determines what the building looks like, what the people look and act like, what’s available, how they will react, the historical background…you get the idea. Apply that list to everything in that character’s life, and then to the other character’s. You won’t use it all. You can’t. Because now you have to decide what to leave out for the reader to fill in.

There will be times when you have to not write, when you have to think, brainstorm, turn on some music and Rafiki your way into the world that you see so clearly, so it can come out of your hands as words.

Pens and pencils and notebooks. You have to have them on you. At all times is best. Except if your job doesn’t allow for that kind of thing. But if you can, great. If you can’t…make a note on something somehow or it’s gone.

Sometimes you have to distract yourself. You’ve completed a draft and gone cross-eyed. You’ve just spent ten hours in one seat because all the planets aligned and you hammered out right along with the outline. Looked at so much research that you don’t know anything else right now, but can describe the entire history of…wherever.

Oh, you know you have to be reading, like, everyday, right?

Why isn’t that book done?

Motivation

I don’t even know how to phrase this properly. I won’t get it right.

Writers think many things about themselves, but “common” is not one of them. Yet, there are so many. Maternity writers, Retirement writers, Memoir writers, This Book is a Result of my Fame in Another Career writers, Already Famous writers, Inherited Industry writers, and any combination of a wild mix of these.

The whole point of this blog is to demonstrate, I’m not any of those things. I missed the boat. Went Directly to Jail, Do Not Collect MFA. If I put down a Blame List, it would be very fucking long, and I wouldn’t be exempt, and I would have blame on all sides for those reasons, too.

But when the weight of the stories I’ve written, the ones rattling already done but not written, the ideas that just bubbled up, and the random snippets, quips, and judgments become too heavy from rejection letters, time spent, time spending itself on me, I question what keeps me coming back.

Because I don’t have anything to offer the world other than what I write, and nothing behind my name to show for it, why do I do it?

I’m an anomaly.

I hear it, I hear you thinking “yeah, you’re special, you delicate snowflake, you unique, glowing, shimmering diamond in the rough, what the fuck ever.”

I carried writing with me this whole time, but I don’t have anything professional to show for it. So, statistically, it’s likely that this blog is the only thing that will be seen of what I write.

I have no idea what anyone thinks of my writing, except people that already like me. There are no agents here. No estuaries of writers that are like me. There’s no fucking Dead Poets Society. Oh wait, I forgot, those were rich kids. Scratch that example. Where was I? Oh, only groups that dabble and hobby, or, this one is really great, a guild that you already have to be published to join. We actually have a best-selling book-to-movie novelist from here. But they moved about the time their work started getting published..from their magazine job…after college which came immediately after school. I don’t think we should claim them, personally. Move back next to the crack house, you want some of “hometown’s glory.” Otherwise, we’re not good enough, then we’re just not good enough.

So, a group of writers who take their craft painfully serious with no published experience of any kind. Oh, wait…scratch that, too. I published two short stories. For online publications. For “exposure.” I don’t even post the links for them anymore. No published experience.

What the fuck keeps me writing? Why?

Some days, I really buy that “for the love of the game” shit. And I do love the game. Finishing my first novel was what I imagined the Peace Corps meant when they said “the toughest job you will ever love.” And it was so fucking hard. As soon as I called it done, I wanted to do it again. Taking an idea into a fully realized section of reality, the crafting. Sometimes I think books are really just written for other writers to read anyway, because otherwise, I never would have caught that hat trick if I hadn’t just done it myself. Or put down the book in awe wondering how you got those common, feudal letters to make such profound ideas into concrete blocks. I could go on like Metatron. But I guess I said it. That’s why I do it.

So, this last week is a good example of the word “fraught.”

I work close to forty hours, and that’s a goddamned gift these days. I just got off my first paid vacation in six years. And it was a glorious example of what writing life could be like. Then my Monday came. They’re depressing anyway. I drive over twenty miles for a job that just crests above minimum wage, but not for long, if other business’ have their say, because there are no jobs in my area. I actually predict that in at least fifteen years, the town I occupy will be called officially “dead.” It’s mostly Baby Boomers and addicts. Old houses that are broken down occupied by people who have no money to fix them.

This Monday was actually a small blessing, since I didn’t have to close/open. Retail people know that misery. And with a variant drive time between fifteen and thirty minutes and insomnia, I’m lucky to sleep. My Tuesday was okay, a little hurried. My Wednesday was perilous. It was a holiday weekend, so everyone had to get shit before whatever they do. And we were less than half staff. When I got home, I was too sore and too tired to eat. My Thursday was more of the same, short less people this time, and at the end of the shift, I was dreaming of the Epsom salt bath I could have. But I was too tired to do it. When my Friday came, it was all I could do to remain upright. Even though I spent most of my Saturday sleeping, I still got up and wrote that night. My Sunday is my weekday to get shit done. Taxes are coming up, doctor appointments, car servicing, grocery shopping, cleaning. Right now my days are fixed, but not my shifts, they go up and down, open, close, and mid. I don’t have a routine, I work around work. On any given day, I have to decide, sleep or write? What’s more important to me, health or sanity? If I stay up all hours, I will eventually be sick. If I never write, I spiral.

So when I bitch about Time and Money, it comes from a place where I may never get to do the thing I love. No one will ever see the thing I love. It may happen that the thing I love just isn’t good enough. I have no way of knowing. I may never know.

This is something I think every artist should experience. Being the Emperor with no clothes. Are you brave enough to walk around with ideas in your head and call yourself clothed? Is the craft alone good enough for you? Everything else is transient. I have books on my shelves by writers whose book that made them famous was not their best book, their best book was much more brave. Must have been written for other writers. They may never see the bestseller list again. But I’ve got their autopsy on my shelf, because it cut me open, too. For a moment, they lived the dream. For all the good it did them.

When Publishing fell in love with Technology, handed you they keys of instant access to the whole world like a weapon, and demanded that you be satisfied, were you? Satisfied with Twitter, Facebook, Blogspot, and Google+? Satisfied that anyone can put out anything on public platforms? Satisfied with the demands that all these facets, now created, are needed for a writer to be seen as a writer? Publishing says it must love you, forgives your appertaining rage, do you still rail that Publishing has become the villain? The calm, dishonorable, vile submission to the whims of the masses.

No one is looking for the next Stienbeck.

It’s your job to sell you now, you’re on your own.

Oh, by the way, why isn’t that book finished yet?

Wage Slavery

I heard this term a long time ago, before it became the truffles on the entrée of current political rhetoric. It was one of those things that I’ve always lived with, but didn’t have a name for. Like Rape Culture.

So, if for some reason you’re reading this and you don’t know what I’m talking about, here’s a few definitions found on the Internet.

“Wage slavery refers to a situation where a person’s livelihood depends on wages…especially when the dependence is total and immediate.” (Wiki)

“Wage slavery is the state where you are unable to perceive choices and create courses of action different from the grind of the job.” Whywork.org

And just to set the tone for this post, here is a quote found on Whywork.org. “Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.” Norman Cousins.

I can’t speak for the politics of wage slavery. But I can tell you what it looks like, what it lives like, what it holds back and what it takes from you.

Just at this company I currently work at, several instances of harassment and insubordination have occurred that will not be responded to. I’m actually terrified to write this, in the thought that someone will make the connection of who I am, even as Nobody, and there goes my job. We all know what happens to people who speak their minds.

No one in my position can afford to speak their mind and lose their job.

I could walk you through a common month as a woman, wife, writer, and clock punching employee. Maybe that’s best, seeing how it all ties together.

Right now, I’m writing this from my last refuge. A nook in my closet/utility/laundry area thing in my human cube apartment. Which I have to be grateful for. It’s this or sitting on the corner with the very nice homeless man we called “Jesus” who was mysteriously picked up by Social Services and never heard from again. Watching it happen sent chills down my spine.

I’ve made this nook pretty badass. A fabric porch chair covered in blankets and some wiggle room, extra laundry baskets covered in blankets and I have an ottoman. I even have a giant plastic skeleton hanging right by me. Hell, I’m going to go to Wal Mart tomorrow and get a hanging jewelry rack for the closet so I can put my headphones, smart phone, and pocket tissues in. I’m sitting under the All and Clorox, so there is a bar above that. It’s going to be downright convenient. Fuck me, I even have a cup holder.

So, let’s start at the first of the month. I feel pretty good. As good as I can feel. But that’s for another day.

I get my first check of the month, husband gets his first two, and we pay bills that aren’t due for days, maybe weeks, because that would overlap with rent, which takes my whole second check. And I haven’t paid this little for rent since the nineties. Car, car insurance, cell phone, and the adjustments debtors have made to accommodate our downgraded lifestyle. I don’t have cable or internet access. I don’t have membership fees, or online subscription services, like Prime, Play, Hulu, or Netflix. So, groceries and gas, the errant soda at work, and that’s it.

Some actual things that have happened; I get yelled at by a customer, which happens often. Because people know they can do that now and get away with it. Except when I go to my boss (who has a Doctorate and 15 years youth on me) and tell them what I need to get this twat out of the line, they have a panic attack. So, I’m getting Retail Flu, misery at both ends. I can’t get my boss to help me, I can’t get this customer what they want. Everyone screams at me until they are tired of it. I tell them I’m going to the bathroom and take headache medicine instead.

Next week, I get yelled at by the other boss, in a manner which I like to call Saddle Up, where they ride your ass for at least an hour, either because they are unhappy, got a bad review, hate poor people, or today just decided to hate you. I’ve seen other people get saddled up, and it’s a lot like prison mentality; I’m so sorry but I’m glad it’s not me. However, this goes on, yelling at me in front of employees and customers for over two hours. Which triggers a panic attack so powerful I’m actually immobilized. What I want to do is leave. If someone had described this to me, I would have thought HR was already involved. But I get to ride it out, shoulders hunched, while what she wants keeps flip-flopping back and forth until I finally get to leave my shift.

Also, if the boss isn’t watching what I’m doing, and isn’t making the only other person watch the queue, I get screamed at for being busy. So I have to make sure and tell my boss to pay attention at work while I am doing work so the work gets done down the line.

A different manager actually dropped the N word. In front of a new black co-worker. When they left, I felt the need to apologize and say that I had never heard that word uttered by another employee here ever, which was the truth. They let it slide and ignored it for the rest of the day. I agonized over it after work. I could have reported it. Maybe I should have. The next day I asked what they wanted to do about it, do you want me to report it, if you want to report it I will back up your statement. The co-worker was way too cool about it, and it hit me that this isn’t unusual. The manager in question was blowharding about how many people he knew and was related to, and this was also true. The co-worker decided to let it go, they needed the pay more than morals. What made me feel sick was that I knew exactly what that felt like.

Right now, I’m waiting for the bills I’ve paid to clear, before I can do anything else with what’s left. What I’ve forgotten at the store, doctor visits, prescriptions, or new clothes for work to replace ones that have worn out.

Now I’m on the second half of the month. My second check is rent. No matter how early it comes, that’s what it gets written for. Nothing but groceries and gas happens on rent weeks.

This is when my medical professional doctorate holding boss decides they are going to tell me that I don’t actually have food allergies. They like to argue, no matter how I try to remain calm, it just seems to piss them off more. I tell them to stop, they say they can just keep going. The only reason it stops is because they’ve become distracted with something else. This is actual textbook harrasement. But I’m too scared to do anything about it, because even though “retaliation” is against the policy, law, whatever, they always manage to find something. Panic attack, bathroom break. I have my phone on me, desperately wanting to walk out, report this, something. The best I can do is ignore them, but they continue through the day, offering to buy me food at some place, offering to buy lunch some other place because “that’s the only thing we can eat together” and making remarks about Easter candy, because “it’s too bad you can’t eat these.”

The month starts over again. This time the manager throws a fit because you are helping someone on the phone too long and not doing your job. Even though it’s an insurance company investigating a customer for fraud. They actually put their hand on the phone, and it’s just a reflex before they make it look like I hung up. Now it’s a zoo around me, because my “peers” are watching my boss go ape shit, me talking on the phone, and covering the phone to try to keep my boss calm. When the call is finally over, I get accused of mishandling the call and not doing my job.

Panic attack. Bathroom break.

I watch the bank account to make sure rent clears before we pay anything else.

I can do nothing about any of this. Because my survival depends on every cent I get. I haven’t gotten to property tax, income tax, vehicle tags, or professional license renewal fees.

I have to take the fits of rage, harassment, being singled out, and customer abuse because if you have a job, you have to hold on for dear life to it.

So, what does this have to do with writing?

Time and Money, dumbass.

Everything plays second fiddle to the J.O.B. I think about writing all day long. A good idea, a scene, a song for the mood, a quote, someone who inspires a character (this also happens in a good way, okay?). After a day with panic attacks, it’s all I can do to come home and lay down. After being the intermediary for managers who do not want to deal with the filth that they perceive our customers to be, and be assured, they do, I am out of social chips and my mind is exhausted. The amount of sleep I get depends on my schedule.

Why does this make me a Poor Angry Writer? What gives me the right to want to write all day and “not contribute to society?” If I didn’t have to worry about getting the necessary education requirements or having health insurance, if my only worry was tapping keys, researching sites, and reading books, what could I possibly contribute?

Well, there is always tutoring and volunteering. My time would be best spent explaining Shakespeare to high school kids, illustrating the metaphors in nursery rhymes for elementary schools kids, or helping middle school kids traverse the lingo in a textbook. Adult literacy. Senior reading groups. College level editing guidance. Or, >gasp<, running a non-profit book store of my own, with a for-profit business on the side. Resumes. Complaint letters. Editorial essays. Wording an obituary. Strategically phrased formal request.

Heaven help us all, writers are fucking useful.

Except when you keep them useless.

Money

The only free thing about writing is thinking.

Everything else costs. Even just a legal pad and pencil. Let’s assume you have Time. All that’s left is Money.

The time you spent on all those short stories are going to need exposure. That’s tech costs to maintain your own social identity through internet, computer, and phone. It’s become impossible to be seen as anything without the constant warm companion of a smart phone. A tablet is better, but only as a companion, not a replacement for your usual equipment.

So you’ve put the time in, arranged some words together, and now…now you’re ready to be seen by the Global Reader. Now your costs start racking up.

Books on writing, DVD lectures on writing, subscription sites, Plus Memberships; all these costs to help build your knowledge base. Of course it would be so much better, since you have Time, to do field research on your subject, which entails purchasing a service or someone else’s time for information. If you haven’t had the cops called on you.

Remember those conferences, workshops, classes, and webinars you signed up for in advance? They are not free. They may hand out three to five bullet points on the introductory page, giving you a taste to get to you to come in for the hard hit of knowledge. Contest fees suck many dry, and believe it or not, a couple publications still only accept snail mail submissions, a reminder of the good old days of when your expenses were paper, printer ink, envelopes, and postage.

Money can afford you to be seen at these events. Where you make your first impression. It was once described to me as speed dating. Rapid intimacy, but both of you have already made your judgment in the first few seconds anyway. Now they have “open mic,” where you get up on stage, like a tagged cow, and moo for everyone to judge at once.

Now, since you have Money, you’ve been subscribing to the essential magazines of the trade. Plus, putting in an order to the publication your submitting to is *always* recommended. These magazines still tell you to tailor your inquires to agents. Study who they like, what kind of books they are passionate about selling, and for fuck’s sake spell their name right. Copy and Paste has made that brainless.

“Open Mic” cuts through all that bullshit, into a whole new world of bullshit, where you have just paid an entrance fee, and no doubt a reading fee, to get up on stage and show that you are an attractive extrovert who occasionally writes.

Or, just self publish. Cheap enough. Be your own PR Champion. Listings on sites, advertising purchases, social media bumps, and now the Executive Memberships.

It would be a whole lot easier to just buy an all-in-one package of self publishing that includes hardbacks, paperbacks, PR material, and other Oscar Night Swag Assortment.

For twelve thousand dollars. Or thereabouts.

Then there’s the rest of us.

After we scratched the minutes away, sneaking in an Evernote here, jotting before the shift starts there, dodging family, friends, and foes to make that precious ass-in-chair time, we have something. Prospecting here and there, with finally enough gold to take to town, the large hand of Capitalism stops what momentum was built up.

No entry fee? No payment. Exposure!

You can forget all that other shit. Because your next sigh of relief will be when your rent check clears, lunch money has been supplied for the week, and there is a birthday coming up. Deadlines are the dreaded  expensive Christmas shopping of the poor writer.

Chin up! So many authors were discovered when they were down on their worst luck.

I once garnered a little hope from a YouTuber who has surpassed popularity and gone right into firmament. Just an average guy, doing his average thing, for the love of art. Until I looked into his career and saw he already knew people from his work on a popular broadcast, and came from a middle class family who saw him through to a completed college degree.

We can discourse about socio-economic boundaries and inherent wealth, but we all know, those who have money can have whatever they want. And those who want to write, money makes all these things possible.

The only currency the rest of us will be dealing in is love of writing. And because we, as writers, have told the world that the only salve to our soul is the written word, once more, we are encouraged with wisdom:

The only thing standing in the way of you is you.