When people ask me what I do for a living, I am always at a bit of a loss as to how to answer. It sounds a little too highfaluting to announce, “I am an author.” You just can’t say that sentence without sounding like you graduated from Oxford, or that you have something large that needs to be pulled out from your backside. My preference is to say, “I’m a storyteller,” but that involves too long an explanation. Usually I say, “I’m a writer.”
As all of you know, that answer never suffices. You have to explain what kind of a writer you are, and then you are expected to talk about your books. Some writers have business cards listing their books. I am always saying I should have those kinds of calling cards, but that I have never been organized enough to get them speaks volumes.
Other professions don’t require the explanations that ours does. It surprises me when people actually say, “Do you really make a living at that?” To date I have not answered, “Are you really stupid enough to have asked that?”
As writers we need to remember that two percent of the population buys more than 90% of the fiction that is sold. I have yet to figure out why it is that I never seem to get into a conversation with that elusive two percent of the population.
There is a certain danger that comes with others knowing about our profession, and because of that I think the official headgear of writers is the same as that worn by court jesters. I have been approached to read manuscripts by more “friend of a friend of friends” than I care to remember. Need a newsletter written? Need a paper edited? Need a business letter crafted? For some reason because we work with words, others seem to think we would love to be involved with their endeavors. What we want to say is, “Frankly, Scarlet, I don’t give a damn.” What we usually say is, “Okay.”
Invariably, those requests come without an offer of remuneration. “It’s just a page or two,” we are told. I don’t ever remember telling a plumber, “It’s just a leak or two.” I mean, plumbers love to work with pipes, don’t they?
As for speaking engagements, beware those that tell you, “We don’t pay an honorarium, but you can sell as many books as you like.” Those are usually organizations that even Ron Popeil couldn’t sell to.
There is a difference between writing full-time, and writing fool-time. When you are too often side-tracked by writing that is not your own, you are a fool-time writer. Guilty as charged. I am glad that I am in good company, though (Thomas Sullivan, come on down.)
I am proud of being a writer, but November is not a good month to remind others of that fact, especially if they have high school kids. In years past I have been hit up by friends and acquaintances to “take a look” at their children’s college essays. I have been encouraged by those parents to “spruce it up a little.” Talk about trying to make a silk purse out of a cow’s ear.
Now I am getting an education as to why these parents were so desperate. Maybe the thought of their child’s staying at home while attending a J.C. for the next two years drove them to seek out “that writer guy.” Yes, the birds have come home to roost. My 17 year old boy is in the midst of filling out college applications.
You would think by now I would be ready for this, as I have been through the process one time before. Four years ago my oldest boy wrote his college essay and then asked me to look at it. When I finished reading it I asked him, “When you wrote this were you trying to give the admissions people every possible reason to turn you down, or just most of them?” We revised the essay. It is a process where you should not have any sharp instruments nearby.
Now I am going through that process again, but it’s even worse. My middle child has decided he should apply to schools like Swarthmore, Rice, Cornell, the Naval Academy, and Brown. Naturally, all the schools want different essays, and many of them want multiple essays. There are six supplemental essays alone for Brown.
You know Munk’s painting The Scream? This month it bears an amazing resemblance to me.
In another week or so, assuming the two of us survive our collaboration, my son’s college essays will be done. Until that time, though, I really wish I wasn’t a writer.
Pax,
Alan Russell
November 5, 2009
It’s much harder to teach family…I’ve learned this. I find my patience tested, and I’m sure they consider killing me in my sleep … I wish you luck.
And as we are all in this “fool-time” gig together, I’ll tip my hat in that direction as well. I write a lot more than I should that is not “career” writing – but then, in a way, all of it is.
Sully and I spent a summer a few years back trading (an estimate) of 60k words in e-mails. I don’t regret pushing a single key.
DNW
[Extraneous note: Wha hoppen to my comment? Posted a couple hours ago and it's gone. Ah, well, here's a facsimile.]
I am still grinning at your plumber metaphor. But if I wasn’t grinning, I’d be commiserating with tears. Witty and wise, Al, and spot on. When someone asks me if I’m a writer, I usually just say, “it’s too late to get your money back.” And I stand duly chastised for “fool-time” writing, which I do a lot of. Thanks for reminding me that I need to get back into the traces. Truth be told, I have a lot of stuff that is eminently salable (he said), and basically I need to decide what direction I want to go in marketwise. It’s a critical decision and a crossroads I’ve faced before (and resolved poorly).
As for biz cards, have you tried photocopying book covers (mass market editions)? They get a little dogeared shoved into the back pockets of Levis, but then that’s what book covers are supposed to look like, right? And the business cards I’d like to RECEIVE, are the ones from that 2% you mention who buy all the books…
Write on, Amigo.
– Sully
When someone asks me what I do, I answer, “I’m a proctologist.” Shuts them up at once.
I agree, David, any correspondence with Sully is a wonderful roller-coaster ride. Way back when (I feel like an old geezer rocking on the porch) before email Sully was my writing mentor. That means I can blame him for everything.
As for Janet’s comment, I know I’d be running myself!
Best,
Alan
Pshaw, I’ll be glad to “take the blame” for anything Al writes, seeing as how he’s an exemplar of wit and wisdom. We are never more freely ourselves than when we write each other, methinks. I’m usually lost in interior space and exceedingly private. I thank one and all correspondents I’ve ever had for drawing out aspects of myself that otherwise would never have been expressed. By contrast fiction is like putting on costumes. Davey, I think that 60K we exchanged was an early prototype of Nanowrimo. What was that word I used to call you for your prolific output? Ah, well, “graphoholic” will do. A nice addiction by any label…
– Sully
Ah, yes. I’m actually glad when people ask me that question — “What do you do?” — because in my circles the female half of the couple (when I was still part of that kind of couple) rarely gets asked that at all; it’s assumed she doesn’t do anything except shop and manage her husband’s domestic world, and so to ask “what do you do” would put the both of you in an uncomfortable, awkward silence. If the question gets asked at all, it’s prefaced with a cautious, “Do you work?”
I say “I’m a novelist” in a jaunty, fuck-it kind of manner, but what surprises (and annoys) me is how people will automatically assume that a) I can’t possibly be published or b) if I *am* published, it must be self-published. Not that there’s anything wrong with either, but I put in a lot of time and work to get my book deals.