As I’ve meandered along (ok, scraped, clawed, & tortured myself) through this novel-in-progress of mine, I’ve never seriously expected to make a living from it. Of course I’ve had the occasional daydream of such a life & of calling myself a working novelist. But what I’ve come to realize is that I’d be happy just being a full-time working writer. Admittedly, I’d like all my future writing to be spent on work I love, and not on work I need; but still, I’d just like to be able to answer that inevitable What do you do for a living question by saying I’m a writer.
Writer Steve Almond, author of (Not That You Asked): Rants, Exploits, and Obsessions and The Evil B.B. Chow and Other Stories, has an funny/interesting essay in Sunday’s LA Times Books section, Can’t Say No: Why One Writer Can’t Turn Down Any Assignments, about what it means to be a working writer & why being considered a writing “slut” isn’t such a bad thing.
It really wouldn’t be such a bad thing.
June 28, 2009 at 5:32 pm
Hi – enjoyed the article and when I got to the bottom, the fact that the writer, Steve Almond, is from ‘outside Boston’ made me check a ‘Poets & Writers’ mag. I picked up in the U.S. last month.
Sure enough, he also wrote another good / related article ‘Author Economics’ re how to survive the recession. I read it on the plane back to Sydney and thought it was interesting. Just checked online and it says ‘print only’ – May/June 2009.
http://www.pw.org/content/mayjune_2009
Cheers.
June 28, 2009 at 9:37 pm
I read that article in P&W. I actually got to see him speak at the LA Times Book Festival a few years ago & just loved his humor.
July 1, 2009 at 4:30 pm
Very cool – nice to hear he’s a good speaker too.
Cheers.