Getting Paid, Life On The Street, And Possessives/Contractions
Welcome to another Friday writing post, my dears. Before we go further, I’d like to point you toward this post by Jeaniene Frost, about money. She demystifies a lot of it.
Look, it does take a couple years to get paid at this line of work. I was talking to the guy who’s going to reshingle our roof last week, and telling him that when one writes, one gets an advance one has to make do with until the royalties come in. IF they come in, and IF the book earns itself out to repay the publisher for the advance, and IF the book keeps selling, and IF you can wait six months between royalty checks which may or may not be worth a piddle in a rainstorm, as my grandpapa used to say. (About the rainstorm, not the royalties.)
A lot of writers get a rude shock when they realize just how infrequently this career is economically stable or viable. There’s no health insurance, no safety net, Dog willing and the creek don’t rise.
I don’t particularly like this state of affairs, but there’s nothing to be done for it. I write as much as I do largely because the Muffin has a Day Job and I am home with the kids all day, every day. Writing is my method of financially contributing, mostly because I can’t earn enough to even pay for daycare nowadays. (Don’t get me started, that’s another rant.)
Which is partly why I view writing the way I do–as a hack. The art to it is solely to please myself.
As long as I’m playing link salad, I should add a couple posts by my LJ friend Kaigou, who writes eloquently on what authors often miss when it comes to people trained for violence and mayhem and (a more useful and thoguht-provoking post) what authors get wrong when they write about life on the street.
The latter error bothers me the most. I can’t count how many books I’ve read, YA and others, that make homelessness “romantic”. Or that gloss over the danger of it. Or the fact that when you are on the fringe, everything has a price and nothing is free. I get a little buggy when I read something that to my mind glorifies street life. The streets are hard. Nobody ends up there because they’re well-adjusted or special. If you’re going to write about street life, please don’t think it’s glamorous or fun or “edgy”.
I am drained and nerve-sparking today (as if you couldn’t tell) so I’m just going to close with one piece of observation/advice. Please, for the love of God, if you want to write, learn your possessives and contractions.
Like it’s is short for it is, and its is a possessive–”belonging to it”. Along with they’re and their, this is the thing that made me chuck a manuscript in the “reject” pile quickest when I was reading slush. I still see it sometimes, especially in blog posts, and it makes me cringe and make that “GUHNAAH!” sound each time.
This is such a basic rule, it gets overlooked a lot. I wish it wasn’t.
And now, dear Reader, having spastically gone all over the board, I take my leave, preparatory to taking some ibuprofen and stretching to kill this headache. Wish me luck.
July 3rd, 2008 at 7:36 pm
Test comment.