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.
 

Stuff that you need to know about being a writer (but were afraid to ask)

Over on the BookTrust blog, Matt Haig blogged the 37 facts that he knows about being a writer. And hey, since it is a good idea...and this is the blogosphere, and I am a writer...this is my list of 26 things that I know about being a writer. (26 things because that is the number of letters in the English alphabet.) So here is more or less, everything that I know about being a writer after thirty-four years of writing (twenty-eight years actually spent being involved in the actual trade of being a paid writer), having sold greeting card slogans, numerous erotica stories, working for a college newspaper and several magazines, having done five years of monthly columns (astrology and Wicca), and having restarted my business last year.

1--The quickest way to annoy a writer is to suggest an idea to them, and then offer to allow the writer to write up the project while you take fifty percent of the proceeds just for having the idea. If it was so easy to write up the idea, then you should do it yourself and leave the writer to work with their own ideas. It is not like there is only one Muse in the world.

2--Writers have been practicing their story telling craft since they learned to spell, if not before they learned to talk.

3--Writers are insulted by the idea that all creative works should be given freely to the world. They are also insulted by the idea that the life span of their copyright should be less than their own and their spouse's lifetimes, plus a dollop of years for their dependents. Even more insulting is the idea that other people should be allowed to use their work without paying the writer.

4--Writers are deeply offended by the idea that they should support themselves with a burger flipping job, even if that burger flipping job involves retail work or a cubicle. In a writer's mind, a writer should be paid for what they do best.

5--While writers do believe that certain forms of writing are better than others, they do not need you to tell them which forms are better. Writers are quite capable of being judgmental all by themselves. The same holds true for market venues (traditional v. indie), other writers and their works; writers can weigh the merits of the written word without the need to consult you or your chosen model of literary standards.

6--Occasionally a writer will give away some of their work. It is called advertising, and does not violate the idea that writers should be paid for their hard work.

7--It is easier to find a new client than convince an existing client to pay a writer more; this is especially true if the writer started out by giving away some of their writing in order to gain a few bylines and portfolio items. It is not heresy for a writer to move onto more monetary rich pastures.

8--A writer is always working, even when it looks like they are playing computer games. Napping, gardening, and talking on the phone are also working on projects. Some of the best writing occurs while loading the dishwasher or taking a shower. The writer's work starts in their brain, and grows long before it is committed to paper or pixels.

9--A writer is capable of ignoring dirty floors and mountains of moldy dishes; such things are not visible in the world of forms and forces that their mind works in.

10--Writers can be driven to the keyboard by the lack of rent and cat food money. This is not prostitution of their talents; it is survival. If a writer could find a rich patron, they would be quite happy to never to write adcopy or any of the less-savory forms of writing ever again...provided that the less-savory forms did not give them a challenge.

11--Writers can play the same song over and over a thousand times without noticing that others are being driven crazy by it. In fact, the same song being repeatedly played may be essential to their writing process.

12--All writers write something that they do not admit to writing.

13--Pen-names, deadlines, and editors are just tools to help a writer be able to write more.

14--A writer's routines are holy, and necessary to compel their Muse to show up. The most valuable routine is quiet time at a keyboard.

15--Writers consider the details about their characters and worlds to be amorphous. A writer will never allow an inconvenient "established" detail to stand in the way of a good story.

16--Writers tend to collect books, cats, and stray facts.

17--Writers live on unguarded food, especially cookies, chips, and soda.

18--Writers obsess over their sales figures and audience numbers.

19--Writers hate people who expound upon how professional writers do things, especially when the expounder is not a professional writer themselves.

20--Despite popular opinion, writers know that not everyone can write. Likewise, they realize that not everyone can fix a car engine, or do plumbing and electrical work. Writers, being specialists, believe that specialists should be used as needed and paid well for their services.

21--Stories eventually find their audiences. The trick is to be happy with the size of one's audience, and have the skill to be able to grow it as time goes by.

22--The hacks of today are busy producing the works that will be studies in tomorrow's literature classes. Shakespeare was a hack; the proof of this is that he wrote entertainment for the masses--even more damning is the fact that he was doing it for money. A successful writer embraces being a hack.

23--Writers cannot help writing. A writer who is no longer writing is dead, or at the very least, very, very sick. Writing keeps the monkeys in one's head from screaming too loudly.

24--All writers are mentally ill. After all, all writers lock themselves up to be alone with their imaginary friends.

25--The market for writing is always changing. A successful writer deals with the market as it is, not as it should be. A successful writer has numerous projects going on, and cultivates new venues to sell their work in.

26--A successful writer needs a strong ego and well-established personal boundaries. They must be able to turn down work that does not help their career, and be able to defend their schedule and mental health from those who want to rob them of their limited time and sanity.

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.