I’m not having a good time. Usually I’m stoic in the face of adversity (at least in these posts), but lately I’ve been biting pillows and munching carpets (I know these are lesbian slang phrases but I don’t care—and so what if I’m a lesbian? that’s my business, right?) The source of my complaint is fiscal, i.e. needing to get a job to survive.
It’s hard for me to write about this, since I tend to supersize the trivial. For everyone else, getting work is a normal occurrence, a necessity. For me, it’s the biggest hardest deal in the universe since I want to write, not work, so I am naturally resistant against all forms of employment. I have had gigs in the past, so I know I can bash through and ride the waves, but it’s beastly. OK, so that’s the main source of my unhappiness. I won’t dwell on it. It doesn’t make for good blog meat: spoiled writer whinges about having to work for a living. But I had to dump it here, since it’s the thing most heavy on my mind.
I’ve always viewed working to stay liquid as separate from all writing endeavours, but lately the two have been sleeping together. After a difficult night renouncing all my writing as useless, I spent the next day looking for work online, and fired out applications. A few minutes later, I was hammering out words like a lesbian possessed: I started up a new ‘support blog’ (now deleted—too time-consuming), then started two new stories. It calmed me immensely and helped remind me writing is what I will always return to, regardless of my failure to rustle up a novel, an agent, whatever.
So yes, very heartwarming. Is your heart warmed? I could massage it for you. So the point is—and you really need the sick bag for this one—regardless how anxious I get looking for work or attempting to slip into society, I know the blank page will always await me when I get home from hosing down pigs or licking clean Catholics. I know that’s more heartwarming than you’re used to at this blog, but permit me this rare moment of human weakness. I’ll return to the book-bragging and aimless rants about nothing later.
Good luck, me.
Good luck, you, indeed. You are facing no different reality than just about every other creative out there. We have to work the proper job to pay our bills and then work the off hours to pave the way to our dreams. Welcome to RealWorld101. But here is the thing, if you keep writing and you keep dreaming and working eventually you will succeed in making that dream of full-time writer a reality. You said it perfectly yourself here: 'regardless how anxious I get looking for work or attempting to slip into society, I know the blank page will always await me when I get home from hosing down pigs or licking clean Catholics.' And, you never know the panapoly of insane character studies you are about to meet out there that you will then be able to weave into your next great piece of literature.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Jennifer! Indeed, being "incognito" as a writer brings you a lot of respite in a very dull job. Anyway. I have a pressing appointment with some scotch. Cheers!
ReplyDeleteAnd while you're out there in a "proper job," just think of all the material you'll be collecting for your fiction.
ReplyDeleteUnlikely: the work world is too deadly dull for fiction.
ReplyDeleteI hope this is encouraging to you: The busier I am with work (that makes me money), the more engaged I am in my writing. It doesn't have to be one or the other.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Chris! Yes, very encouraging! Now win Lex already :)
ReplyDeleteJust think, if you compare working and writing, then work will get you nowhere, but writing will!
ReplyDeleteGreat post, Nicholls. I feel your pain. I only work two days a week and moan about it constantly (poor Cinn. It's not enough I'm leaching off of him, I have to moan about the little work i do). It's unbelievably dull, but I never would have written Miss West's Requisitions (photocopy cyborg homicide type thing) without it, so there's always a positive.
ReplyDeleteMiss West x