Rejoice--I am not a professional writer

Let the universe rejoice! Let be known that I am not a professional writer! I am not even a hack!

And how did I learn this? By taking a quiz. The quiz is by Lisa Morton and is on the Horror Writers Association LA article page. For those who just want to see the questions, here they are:

1. Is your home/work place messy because that time you’d put into cleaning it is better spent writing?

2. Do you routinely turn down evenings out with friends because you need to be home writing instead?

3. Do you turn off the television in order to write?

4. Would you rather receive useful criticism than praise?

5. Do you plan vacations around writing opportunities (either research or networking potential)?

6. Would you rather be chatting about the business of writing with another writer than exchanging small talk with a good friend?

7. Have you ever taken a day job that paid less money because it would give you more time/energy/material to write?

8. Are you willing to give up the nice home you know you could have if you devoted that time you spend writing to a more lucrative career?

9. Have you done all these things for at least five years?

10. Are you willing to live knowing that you will likely never meet your ambitions, but you hold to those ambitions nonetheless?

Given that Morton believes that you need to answer yes to all ten (but is willing to give you some slack for eight or more), the people who know me will instantly see how I do not qualify by her standards. Of course, my biggest problem with the whole quiz is that she wrote it after being disappointed in a discussion group where no one actually talked about writing (which describes every writer discussion group I have ever encountered).

Here are my answers:

1. No, I just generally have a high tolerance for dirt. And some of my best bouts of cleaning are when I am struggling with something I am writing, and need to do some heavy thinking about it. I guess that if you are working on your writing, then you never actually clean anything. Damn food service habits bite me in the butt again (that is where I picked up my high tolerance for dirt, and the habit of thinking while cleaning).

2. No, and no. My schedule includes time to be with people because I slowly go crazy if I do not talk with people on occasion. (Again, let's blame that one on food service--I could blame it on being the oldest of eight kids, but that would just be too harsh.)

3. And miss my shows?! Hell, no. I write during commercials...occasionally.

4.  I have very seldom actually met useful criticism or honest praise...so I have no clue how to answer that one. I guess that makes it an no.

5. Does anyone remember the last vacation that I took? For the last seven years that I worked food service, I did not take a vacation. And now, I can't afford one...but I couldn't afford one while doing food service, so not much has changed. I never planned my vacations around writing and research--no, I dealt with my family instead. So no...unless one considers my extended time out of the work force as an extended vacation, in which case--no.

6. No. No. Oh, hell no! Honestly, I find that talking to other writers (who are not my friends) to be terribly tedious. And quite often, a complete waste of time. As for my friends (writers and otherwise), writing is just one of the many things that we talk about. I am fond of talking about cats, witchcraft, and Doctor Who...in fact, these topics trump talking about writing.

7. I have worked food service all my adult life...therefore, I have no idea how I could take a lower paying job than that. So I have to answer no...unless being unemployed counts--and I doubt that it does.

8. A more lucrative career?! Considering that I spent my entire adult working life in food service and the fact that I was a high school dropout (until I was forty), I guess that giving up writing erotica for the glamorous world of drug dealing is what the lucrative career is. And I was never going to have a nice home as a high school dropout, so by default, this one is an no. You can't answer yes to a question that does not actually allow for a yes to be given.

9. Yes, I am still the same person that I was five years ago. But considering that all my answers are no's, this is technically also an no, isn't it?

10. Ambition?! I have it on the best of authorities that I have no ambition. And being realistic, I have no high hopes for my writing career. For god's (and goddess's) sake, I write erotica and other low-brow stuff. I am not going to be Stephen King or J. K. Rowling. Or even a literary writer like my sister. And I might not even be entertaining. So again, this is a technical no.

So that gives me ten big f***ing indications that I am not a professional writer. That should make a lot of people happy. Including Lisa Morton. Good thing that I do not have an union card because it would have to be ripped up.

But here is the twist. By IRS standards, I am a professional writer. I have to pay self-employment tax. I paid it last year; I have to pay it this year; and even if I quit writing right now, I will have to pay it next year. The one question that Lisa Morton does not ask is whether or not, you are actually making money as a writer. But I guess in her universe, that question does not matter. So rejoice that I am not a writer. And someone please go convince the IRS that I am not a professional writer, so I do not have to pay them any more taxes.
 

The biggest hazard to my writing business

Twice in this past month, I have been reminded that the biggest hazard to my business as a writer is myself. To be more precise, it is my mental programming that is the problem. And it is something that I really need to remember.

What brought on the reminder that I have some shoddy mental programming (think mental virus and malware) was the fact that I have spiraled down into two very bad mental modes in the last thirty days--mental modes that have taken me over a week apiece to crawl out of. And both were brought on by stray comments by people who, well, really do not understand the current state of my business. (In fact, I am sure that neither one knows a damn thing about my business.)

The first mental mode was a nice deep depression. The second mode, well, I am going to use the term "violence and suicide" to describe it--it is something that I think my relatives will instantly understand because we all have it to varying degrees.

Both modes were brought about because someone made a random comment about the fact that perhaps because of the lack of income I am making as a writer that perhaps I should be looking for a regular job.

Now, my lack of income as a writer can be explained away by the fact that my business basically restarted just a year ago. While I have been freelancing off and on since 1984, I didn't start self-publishing (ebooks) until just a year ago. Yes, by that mark, my business is just a year old. And most of that first year, I was still attending the University of Colorado at Denver...my business was more of a back burner thing than it was a front line priority.

But the important part, which is being overlooked, is that it is doing better than I have ever done as a writer previous to this point. I am actually selling ebooks--not at a quick pace, but enourgh that I can see that what I need the most is more stock to sell.

And more stock to sell is exactly what I would lose if I throw in the towel at this point in time. Oh, I can still hack out the occasional short story, but what I really need is a novel or two, and some other major projects. Because all I currently have up are articles and short stories--I do not have anything longer than that.

Now, my regular readers know the reason why I will not be able to get anything longer up--the only work that I have experience in is restaurant and retail work--twenty years worth (oh, and a college newspaper job--but I did not major in journalism). The type of work that I am qualified for tends to be you are overworked and underpaid, and on call 24/7. Basically, they work you until you are too exhausted to do anything up, and ensure that you have to work until the day you die. (And they say that slavery is a thing of the past.)

I know logically that I am better off just taking the next few months to work on bigger projects (in fact, my production schedule is completely full until February...if not later). But emotionally, my mental programming says that I should listen to the bad advice and go back to flipping burgers...because short term money issues trump all long term plans, no matter how sound the long term plans are.

And I know that I am prone to walking away from my writing even in the best of times. Before I got into restaurant management, I had actually started to get hand-written rejection slips. The professional writers in the room will know what that means--I managed to convince some editors that I was going to be a real writer some day.

What did I do? Oh, I quit writing for several years. It was only after spending some time as a restaurant manager that I picked up the pen again. And one could argue that I stepped away from my writing again while I was in college. My venturing into ebooks was caused by the fact that I lost my college newspaper job, and my school schedule was not conductive to burger flipping, plus the fact that one of my friends was doing good in a market that I have been doing in print since 1984.

So I know that I have to be cautious about my own mental state. Especially now that my business has started to actually work for me. At the moment, provided that nothing major goes wrong, such as ebooks becoming illegal or something like that, my writing income will be better than any of my previous years...and that is even if I do not write another word. This is not the time that I should be thinking about stepping away from the table--at this point in time, I should be rolling up my sleeves for a major campaign.

We will see if my mental programming allows me to do so or not. At this point in time, I am not making any sudden bets. But then again, I am aware of my little mental programming problem...and knowing is half the battle, right?

I have read a bad blog about you

The other day, I got a private message on Twitter stating that read:

I just read a really bad blog about you.

The message also included a shorted URL that rotated through a "session timed out" page before landing on what looks like the Twitter log-in page. I did not go any further. For one thing, the webaddress was not right, and I was already logged into Twitter on another tab.

I think that it is safe to presume that it is a phishing campaign.

But I will admit that it made me curious, so I googled myself "Morgaan Drake Eckstein." The only thing I saw bad in the first five pages was a couple of social networking profiles that show no activity.

I know that there is bad stuff written about me on the internet---after all, I blog about Golden Dawn and the occult. The number one pasttime of certain people in those fields is to badmouth anyone that looks like they might be an authority someday. In fact, I believe that this applies to all working writers.

My advice is to not really gave a duck's butt about bad blog posts about oneself, and just keep working. If nothing else, it will annoy the spammers and your critics.

Toxic Concern

During the last month, my regular readers may have noticed that I have not been posting. Truth be told, I was not doing a lot of writing at all.

The lack of writing can be firmly laid at my doorstep---I started to care what someone might think about what I was writing. The natural result as most of you can already guess is that I quit writing.

At first, the care was merely about the issue that they were concerned about. Then it ballooned up to cover all my writing, including my Facebook and Twitter updates. Yes, I have a mental health issue.

Unfortunately, because my sole source of income is writing (ignoring student loans), well either I am going to have to ignore what they think about my writing or I am going to have to go back to flipping burgers for a living. Either option is really acceptable, but one is a little more acceptable than the other.

So to add to my list of things that cause writer's block, I must now add "toxic concern" to the list: the concern one feels about what readers might think about one's writing, the type of concern that toxic writing friends love to install in you when you are not looking.

The really sad part of this is that I do not think that they are even a regular reader of my writing (they claim to be a regular reader, but we all know that you are most likely to be tossed that claim by someone who googled the subject, randomly found you and got upset about your opinion). If they were, they should have requested certain amendments to one of my rants back in February (like the day after I wrote a particular rant). And I know that they are not a member of my audience.

(I do not need to point out to anyone that "readers" and "audience" are two different things. Readers can be anyone that stumble upon your work; audience are those that the piece was actually written for. In my case, my audience tends to be students of the esoteric, especially those with the same type of background that I have. I write about my background because I figure that I am not the only person with the issues that I have. I could be wrong---after all, I have been accused of being mentally ill on more than one occasion…though one wonders if the mentally ill do not deserve to have some writers of their own also.)

So hopefully, the worst of my bout with toxic concern is over, and I can get back to work. If I am wrong, well I know what I need to do, and it is not going back to flipping burgers.

Family myth time---There can be only one

Between reading Seth's blog today (Surely not everyone), and David Shenk's book (The Genius in All of Us) yesterday, I am reminded of one of my family myths that drive me crazy. There is an unspoken belief in my family that only one person can have any particular talent or skill.

I wasn't particularly conscious of this rule while I was growing up. I did not stop and think about the implications of "Oh, XYZ is the artist in the family." Nor did I notice that only their artwork got praised and everyone else's artwork was generally ignored, if not picked to death for not being as good as XYZ. Heaven forbid if it was actually better.

As an adult, and a member of Golden Dawn who has fought to get people to recognize that all members can bring something to the table, I have examined the effects that this particular family rule had on me; I have also kicked around the effects that similar rules might have imposed on other people.

I suspect that sometimes when I fail to follow up on a good idea that it is because I am not the person that the family rule says should be pursuing that goal. I suspect that part of the toxicity I recieved from my sisters is based on the fact that I am ignoring the fact that I am NOT the writer in the family. And I really should not be thinking about picking up an ink pen and drawing either. And let's not mention going to college and running a business.

What is my role in the family? Oh, I am the criminal black sheep of the family. Not that I have ever served a day of jail time, the statement probably still stands "Oh sooner or later, [Morgan] is going to end up in jail. It is only a matter of time before he does something stupid and gets caught."

Outside of some petty shoplifting as a kid, some minor damage to private property, and a couple of druken fights (ironically only in one of them was I personally drunk), I am fairly innocent. Another family member has screwed up worse, but it does not matter---I am supposed to be the criminal in the family, not them.

I am NOT the writer, the artist, the business person in the family, or even a decent human being. Or at least, that is what the family myth and rule says. It is just too bad that I am running out of patience and refuse to humor this idea any more, isn't it? After all, I would be such a better human being if I just accepted my place in the universe, and let others do what they are best at.

Good for my sister and there can be only one

Yesterday, I learned that my sister XXX has officially registered her business with the state of Oregon: XXX.

Good for her, I say. Which is about all I can say.

Why? Simply because I have no idea of the quality of her work, or her expertise in this field.

We do not talk about our businesses with one another. It should be noted that I technically don't have a business because I have never filed official paperwork beyond the simpliest of tax forms. There is also the fact that...well, I am a hack as everyone else in my family will quickly point out.

I was not blessed by any of the muses. And in my family, there can be only one. Literally and metaphorically.

There is only one artist in the family. There is only one writer in the family. There is only one business-person in the family. There is only one scholar in the family. It is an unspoken family rule. Introductions used to go "This is XYZ, and they are the little fill-in-the-bragging-right child in the family."

No one ever brags about me. I fill in the vital black sheep, oh where did we go wrong slot. I am a pirate and a criminal, an addict and a fool, or whatever other evil is needed to make someone else in the family look better. Or feel guilty. And several of the stories are either not true, or so badly changed from what really happened that truth proves illusionary.

Or at least, that is how it was. And may still be; last fall events make me positive that I am still being used for this despite the fact that I torched the bridges and refused to talk to several family members over a decade ago. Needless to say, last fall events made me add to my list of family members who I will never have a conversation with ever again.

So good for my sister for starting her own business. And if any of my friends see me venturing into PR work or marketing, please remind me to stop. After all, I am not the marker guru in the family.

Edited on 23 June 2010 to protect the interests of the innocent.

What a way to start a day

There are certain joys to being a freelance writer, a college student, and being married---all at the same time.

This morning was not one of them. I had planned on writing a product review, a post on my Golden Dawn blog, and then working on one of my research papers after the online class today. Unfortunately, last night's grief followed me into this morning.

I hadn't even brushed my teeth yet, or gone to the bathroom, when I found myself on deck listening to the wife talk about the options that she could do rather than go back to work for the oh so lovely boss that she is currently working for.

For those who do not know this, I am prone to panic attacks. Thanks a lot DNA. I also come from a family where I was expected to sacrifice everything for others. Thanks a lot mom and dad. I was also told repeatly that it did not matter what I had to give up because I would never amount to anything. Thanks a lot...oh, you know who you are.

So now, there is a large part of me that is debating the merits of changing my summer plan, dropping out of college, and going back to work in food service. I could care less last night---in the sense that her switching jobs had nothing to do with my own business. Now I am ready to torch my own business because she dumped more emotional issues and ideas on my plate before I even had my morning soda.

I don't need to tell the writers in the room how that affects the writing, do I?

If you have any ideas about how to deal with days like today, please expound on them in the comment section.

Bad week, Bad mood, Bad writing day

One of the problems with being a writer is that being in a bad mood can threw a monkey wrench in your ability to write. Today is one of those days for me.

This last week has been less than nice on the monetary end. Between being denied a line of credit, the little tiff between the state of Colorado and Amazon, and the fact one of the programs I was taking part in is now only paying in credit vouchers, it has been unpleasant from a monetary viewpoint.

It is weeks like this that make me wonder if my toxic writing friends are right, and I should have never got involved in the writing business in the first place. Then I remember that it was a bad monetary situation that made me get serious about being a professional writer.

Honestly, I would have never became serious about being a writer if I did not become unemployed. My childhood taught me that being self-employed is a good way to lose everything you own. Then again, so is being unemployed.

It is on days like this, where my mood is basically black and toxic, that I am glad that I make to-do lists. A to-do list is the only thing that is keeping me going today...that and the fact that I refuse to give my toxic writing friends the satisfaction of seeing me quit the writing business.

So what if I was denied a line of credit? Everyone is being denied credit at the moment. Both consumers and business people are straped for credit at the moment. As long as I can figure out a way to stay one step ahead of the wolves, I will be ok. Being denied a line of credit is no reflection on my state of self-worth.

So what if Amazon is going to quit doing business with their Colorado based Amazon Associates because they are upset with the new tax law that the state of Colorado passed? I did not have that big of a stake in the program to begin with. It would have been nice to have the income flow, but there are other sources to tap that I have not started using yet.

The same can be said about the program that switching to credit vouchers. I did not have that much invested in the program to begin with. Getting paid in money would have been nice; but given the fact that I was not that much into being a glorified salesman, maybe it is best that I drop doing the program anyways.

(Note that from a business and economic viewpoint, I understand the reasons for each of these decisions that came down the pike this week...it is just that understanding the reasons does not make it any more pleasant to deal with the effects on my bottom line.)

And none of these decisions should make me rethink what I am doing overall. My plan for my business is about as sound as it was before. On one hand, there is that thought that maybe I should change my plan, or that I should be hunting for a big score; on the other hand, I know from previous experience that making a decision in the mood that I am in leads to nothing but indecision.

So I will stick to my plan...for now...until I see that it needs to be revised...and I am rational enough to see the logic is changing it. Besides that it why you create a business plan for in the first place...to use it for guiding your decisions when you are incapable of making a decision. Or at least, that is what I use them for.

As for my black bad mood, it is starting to lift...it is hard for it to survive the light that actual writing shines into it. Besides I have deadlines to meet with actual paychecks involved. And actual income should always win over potential "might happen" income.

The Impossible Reply

Over the years, some of the hardest writing that I had to do has turned out to be personal, rather than monetary and creative oriented work. Heck, there are times personal writing is even harder than academic writing. I was reminded of this fact today when I recieved a holiday card from my sister.

When I saw the return address on the envelope, I sighed. Yesterday, I recieved a Christmas card from one of my brothers. My prompt response was that he had obviously not recieved the memo that I was...well, not worthy of inclusion in the family. So it was a big surprise to recieve a card from my sister, who should have sent out the memo.

The regular readers of my blog will understand why sending a response to her is going to be hard. This sister is the one that I finally figured out why she was a toxic writing friend early this fall. And one of the things that she told me is that she never wants me to talk about college, my writing, and Golden Dawn ever again.

Hmmm...I have no idea what I am supposed to write to her about. I guess she will have to settle for a thank you, and possibly a question about how everyone is. Because I have nothing else that I can say. *sigh*

It is the ideas that count, not my English!

It amuses me the number of individuals I get to interact with that believe that they should be judged solely on their ideas and creativity, and that it does not matter how badly they string a sentence together. And I really want to locate this fantasy world that they inhabit where editors and readers are willing to struggle with a piece of writing to get at the meat of the ideas. It sounds like a marvelous place to visit, though I doubt that my Virgo sun would be happy there for long.

I first became painfully aware of this belief when dealing with one of my toxic writing friends (you know the type---they are your friend, but you do not dare talk about writing around them if you want to get anything written in the next month, aka wet blankets).

My friend had done a draft of a novel, and he wanted my opinion of it. After ten minutes of reading, I had finally moved onto the second page of the manuscript. Yes, I said ten minutes to hack my way though the first page.

Now if this manuscript had been on the slush pile, it would have gotten the form rejection slip on the first page, first paragraph, perhaps even first sentence. Before I could even address the ideas in the script, I had to give him feedback about how to write a proper sentence.

And what he told me was that it was unfair that he would be judged on solely on the basis of his ability to write a clear sentence; all he needed was an editor who was willing to work with him; his ideas were worth the effort.

Nice fantasy world, I told him. He ignored me; he does not believe that my writing and editing experience qualifies me to have an opinion. I seriously doubt that he would listen Stephen King, J. K. Rowling, or anyone else for that matter, if they told him the same thing.

The reason I have been thinking about this is that recently I gave someone feedback about their blog, and got told that they were more concerned with ideas than learning how to present their information in a reader-friendly format. Blog T (not its actual name, sorry to whoever is actually writing Blog T) has many attributes that are going to make me talk about it often; it will serve us well as an example of what not to do.

The writer may think that it should be only their ideas that should matter; but given the habits of readers, they are dead wrong. I wish them luck in actually finding the fantasy world they think exists, where readers and editors are willing to work at reading something and do not run off to better sites at the drop of a comma splice.

Meeting for rewrites

Wednesday, I did my mandatory meeting with Professor Jeff Franklin concerning rewriting one of my papers. It was less painful than I thought it would be. I had put this off as long as I could. I would not say that it is against my religion to do rewrites...but I really dislike the process. Perhaps even loathe it.

Which is why I almost burst into flames when I learned at the beginning of the semester that twenty percent of my grade in Gothic Literature was tied up in a rewrite...as in I am required to actually rewrite one of the papers I turned in if I wanted any chance to get a decent grade in that class. My Colorado History also requires a rewrite, though it is more of a rough draft for that one.

Rewrites are not necessarily bad. There are times that they are needed. This semester, particularly.

I have the voice of a toxic writing friend and toxic writing enemy echoing in my head still from the beginning of the semester. (The difference between a TWF and a TWE is that the friend actually cares about you, the enemy is just a nasty piece of work wanting to see you crash and burn.) The sad part is that they are both relatives (interesting family I have: none of us are happy unless everyone else is miserable). Basically, I am wasting my time as a writer (I do not think that they got the memo that I am actually a hack), as an astrologer and occultist, and as a college student (the note that they gave me that I am wrong to pursue a career as a teacher was just silly---obviously they do not realize that is more my wife's idea than mine).

So periodically, this semester I would be working on an assignment, or sitting in class, and wonder why I was bothering to even try. I turned in some pretty bad work this semester. Just surviving the semester will be a major accomplishment with some of the low days I had lately. Essentially, everything I have written this semester needs whacking with a rubber mallet to bring it up to even my low hack standards, not alone something that looks like it was actually written by an university student.

As much as I do not want to, now I need to click "publish post" and get to the rewriting. The gnashing of teeth and the rending of garments you hear will be me bemoaning the fact that life as a writer is harsh, and Thoth and Seshet are just being mean to me today.

NaNoWriMo is approaching fast

National Novel Writing Month (NaNiWriMo), which takes place in November, is fast approaching. And I am so not ready for it.

I have yet to slip over to the NaNoWriMo website and register for this year. I have yet to figure out my plot, or even what type of novel I am aiming for this year. I have yet to choose my inspirational/plot suggestion/grammar checking book. And I have yet to attempt to get ahead on my college homework to attempt to make any of this happen.

A large part of delay is the fact that my sister's voice is still ringing loudly in my head. There is nothing like being told by your favorite relative that you are wasting your time pursuing writing, a college education, and your career to take the winds out of your sails...except maybe a bullet though the heart.

Ironically, this may actually be the best chance I have to actually hack out 50,000 words in the space of thirty days. Revenge and proving people wrong is a big motivator in my family.

I guess we will see at the end of November if she did me a favor or not.

Attack of the toxic writing friend

Did a lot of tech support stuff last night. My wife brought a new laptop with her student loan money (she is getting her second bachelor degree---Spanish). The reason for this purchase is that it was really hard this last semester to share a single computer.

(We did have some other computers, but all in various states of non-function.)

Then this summer, she hogged the computer for her family tree and neighborhood history research projects, so I ended up doing less freelance writing than I was hoping to.

So her purchase of a new laptop should mean that I get my homework done in a more timely fashion, and result in more actual writing getting done by me.

The ironic part is that I am considering making this my last semester of college and giving up on being a writer.

Earlier this week, amusingly enourgh on the day that we read the story of Abel and Cain in the Biblical Literature class, I recieved the nastiest letter I have ever gotten from one of my toxic writing friends (technically she is a relative). Then another one from someone else who decided to wade into the conflict.

I came to the realization that she was a toxic writing friend several years ago. I noticed that after talking to her, I would not write for a week. But this letter was worthy of my mother, except mom would never commit something like this to paper or pixels; you can always claim that you were misheard if there is no paper trail.

One of the reasons I quit talking to my mother was that I would not write for a month afterwards; there were also major religous differences. After awhile, I decided that I did not want to play the game any more. I love my mother, but one of us obivously needs some mental help.

My dear sister has came to the conclusion that it is me that needs the mental help. As most of my readers know I dabble in the occult---turns out I am delusional.

Also turns out that I have no potential to be a writer or a teacher (I am wasting my time on two fronts). I had always thought that the toxicity was that knowing the writing business, she was trying to protect me from the heartache of failure. So much for me associating noble intentions to her actions. Turns out that she feels that I do not have the full emotional range needed to be a writer.

She is right. All I wanted to do was flush her head after reading the letter. It took me a whole day to realize that I still love her despite the fact that I am a lousy writer, a bum, and completely worthless.

I probably will not give up being a writer. I actually did some writing Friday which was a first time I have ever written anything the day after dealing with my sister. And dropping out of college is probably not going to happen either (I started college because I could not find a job, and I might shot someone if I go back to flipping burgers), despite the old chestnut of accusing me of mooching off the wife (I guess paying for her studio rent all that time counted for absolutely nothing).

I regret that I may never talk to my sister ever again. But the extent of the poison ink dripping off the email, that may just be self-defense.

Is this the right path?

Tonight, I had one of those toxic writing friends moments. As I have probably mentioned elsewhere in this blog, there are some people that you do not talk about your writing or the things that you are doing to grow your writing business; simply because after talking to them, you end up feeling depressed or blocked. Toxic writing friends (not neccessarily a friend; it is just a generic label for the type of person I am talking about) are the wet blankets that drown out the muse and your will to get up and type in the morning.

In this case, it wasn't even my conversation. I was just an innocent bystander. My mother-in-law called about the monetary difficulties that my brother-in-law is having. I got involved because the wife kept asking me about my opinion about the situation. Honestly, I would rather soak my head in gasoline and set myself on fire; that is how toxic the conversation was in my opinion; plus I really didn't want to get involved. My brother-in-law is still going to school, but needs to take out a large private student loan to survive. He is unemployed at the moment, as so many other people are, and needs a co-signer. I would go into more detail, but the finer points are not important.

Now, I understand being unemployed (ignoring my freelance and internet writing) and going to college. I also understand needing a co-signer. In my case, I am unemployed because restaurants can hire someone else for less than they would have to pay me (ten years of restaurant management is not necessarily a plus in today's or yestersday's job market). Fortunately, I have my wife (an elementary art teacher) who is willing to co-sign for me. As she notes, we are in this together.

What got me thinking was that he is trying to borrow much more money than I am. We are both working on bachelor's degrees; he is aiming for something to do with computers (programming or something like that, I think) while I am aiming for literature. He is going to ITT or Devrey, or some school like that (can you tell I don't play much attention to his life?). I went to the Community College of Denver for my Associates (ok, I need to back-transfer a science class for the piece of paper) before moving on to the University of Colorado at Denver.

Now, I am not sure that his degree is actually going to be worth the price he is paying to get it. In theory, the type of job that it will allow him to get will pay far more than the job that I am going to qualify for ("Would you like fries with that?"), even with an advanced degree. But will his degree be worth the investment? Will he actually use it?

For that matter, will what I am doing (college and writing) be worth the investment that I am putting in? I am not sure. The happy little cynic in me says no, or is that the voice of my mother? Either way, I am not completely happy with the seed of doubt in my head. Ahh, the toxicity of it all.

Fortunately, it should be a short bout of writing block. After all, I have a completed article that I wrote in long-hand today that I need to type up tommorrow, then I got finals all next week. It should keep me from thinking about the possibility that I am just wasting my time and energy chasing a set of impossible worthless dreams. By the time the dust clears, I should have forgotten this toxic conversation which is the trick when dealing with toxic writing friends.

Toxic writing friends

One of the hazards of being a writer, especially one that is trying to make a living at writing, is having toxic writing friends.

Toxic writing friends are those people, who after you deal with them, cause you to come down with a bout of writer's block. It can be as little as ten minutes in some cases; and whammo, you can't write for days or weeks. Their opinions poison the well of your creativity.

I have a few of these friends. One of my oldest friends falls in this category. My sister also falls in this catergory. And I am quite sure if my mother was still talking to me that she would be the worst of the lot.

It is not that they mean to be toxic. (Ok, I lied; I am positive that my mother means to derail others; she has self-esteem issues.) It is simply that they open their mouths; and for days afterwards, you wonder if you are not wasting your time at the keyboard. Their voice, and opinions, are louder than your muse's.

Like my friend, he does not mean to be a wet blanket. It is just that he is in a really bad spot economically, plus he has a toxic family, therefore he is busy looking for the big score; my stragety of playing the long game at Helium and Associated Content is a big waste of time as far as he is concerned.

I understand his viewpoint. If I was looking for the big score, they would look like losers too. But I am taking a rather long view of things. I guess that it is the result of running a restrauant for so long; the profit there came in a nickel at a time; a lot of gyros had to be sold just to break even; but if you sold enough, behold profit.

The reason that my toxic writing friends are on my mind is that I spent a couple of hours with one of my sisters the other day. For some reason, I find other writers (she is a technical writer at the moment) to be very toxic. Especially, when they tell you not to give up your day-job.

Hey people, I would love to have a day-job. Remember: I am unemployed. For me, being a writer is not an option that I embraced willingly. It was something that I was saving for my fantasy life. It was not something that I thought I would actually have to figure out a way to make it work.

But seriously, who in their right mind is going to hire me with my school schedule? As I said, I would love to have a day-job. I don't.

So given the fact that I need to keep writing, I decided not to bring up my writing efforts while she was visiting. It didn't work. College came up instead, and how what she studied in college is not what she is currently doing. Nor any of her friends for that matter. She also hinted that maybe transferring to the University of Colorado is perhaps not right for me. There was also the fact that her husband is still paying for his education.

All this brought up the question: Am I doing the right thing?

I wallowed in that for a few hours yesterday, then brushed myself off and went to work on the lodge's website for a few hours. I am not completely recovered, but I am getting better.

And that is the thing: If you have toxic writing friends, you have to come up with ways to cope with it. Like I made sure to have something written in long-hand before my sister visited, something that I have to type up. Typing up stuff helps me get back into writing. Anything that helps you overcome writer's block will probably help you recover from your toxic writing friends.

Now, you have to pardon me, I have to go write something in long-hand, I got to visit one of my oldest friends next week, and he is a toxic writing friend.