Almostgotit.com

Guest Post by Emily Anderson

Anyone with a gift for words and access to a pen or keyboard can be a writer, and anyone who is a writer will write. If by ‘break into writing,’ however, you mean ‘write and get paid for it,’ you’ll also need an alchemist’s brew of talent, humility, luck, and perseverance.

Creative Commons photo by Rita Banerji

If you’re serious about writing and getting paid for it, Rule #1 is ‘Don’t be so arrogant as to think you have all the good ideas.’ To break in, you have to be willing to try any number of genres you think you might be able to handle, then run with the ones that work, whether or not you’re particularly interested in them. If you have your heart set on sports commentary and someone offers you a job plotting Web murder mysteries, go for the mysteries. If you think biography is your forte and you get a chance to write television ads, write as many of those suckers as you can.

Why so callous an approach? Rule #2. The sad truth about writing is this: ‘If you’re not writing for pay you’re not likely to get paid for writing.’ You have to finagle your way into the field, then manage to stay here, all the while constantly cultivating your contacts. If you don’t know someone or know someone who knows someone who needs a writer, you won’t get the job. If you don’t know someone or know someone who knows someone with the power to get you published, you won’t get published.

There are a number of ancillary rules, of course, like ‘Don’t whine,’ ‘Never miss a deadline,’ ‘Never turn down a gig, no matter how slammed you are.’ In the end, though, it all comes down to this:

Writing, as Annie Savoy said of baseball in the Ron Shelton classic film Bull Durham, ‘may be a religion full of magic, cosmic truth and the fundamental ontological riddles of our time, but it’s also a job.’ And for a working writer, it’s the best job on earth.

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Emily Anderson is the author of All-American Comfort Food and The Pursuit of Happy Results: Barry Spann and the Making of Twenty-Seven Landscapes.  Emily writes for television and the Web and is on the staff of Paris Notes.

Emily’s blog: The Rocky Road of Love and Other Great Recipes.

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Creative Commons photo by BabyDinosaur

Someone recently asked me how they could get into the writing field.  Here’s my answer, and I’ve also asked some of my professional- writer friends to add their own two bits (see comment section, below!)

Writers write. End of sentence. There’s no more to the definition of “writer” than that.

I suspect that “getting into the writing field” means something else, however. As in: making money, or getting attention of some sort for one’s writing. Oh dear. “Don’t give up your day job” is about all I have to say about the money part, and “start a blog” is all I have to say for the second.

All sorts of people get paid for their writing who don’t think of themselves as “writers.” People write reports, letters, reviews, and even email every day in their jobs. Why is this sort of writing always discounted? Writers write. Writers who want to make money with their writing most likely are already doing it.

That’s not what you meant, I know: you want to wear a beret and write in coffee houses, and to earn $100,000 advances just for being brilliantly-articulate YOU.

NOT. GOING. TO. HAPPEN.

Go ahead and do the coffee house thing on your day off: there’s nothing to stop you. And get that $100,000 the same way other people do it, by researching and writing up a great idea for the boss you already have.

If, however, you still refuse to give up the whole, romantic, “follow your dreams!” stuff, go buy yourself the latest edition of Writer’s Market. That’s what my cousin-who-writes-articles-and-stuff-for-a-living told ME to do.

Plus also? I got my current writing job because of connections, not personal brilliance. Sound familiar? Sound just like any other kind of job? BINGO.

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Cross-posted at Blogher.com

Oh my Lord, could I use a good support staff.  Getting it for free would be a bonus, but I believe we abolished slavery in this country some time ago.

One of the more snotty things I’ve done in recent years is tell my administrator-husband that no, I would not be hosting his departmental affairs at my house as a matter of course, because I learned a very hard and demeaning lesson after stupidly doing that sort of thing at The Institution That Shall Not be Named.

Plus also,  he is the one employed in that position.  I have my own work to do.

So he now pays the occasional restaurant tab for his staff and faculty members, instead.

Laurie over at Punk Rock HR has an excellent post today on why Michelle Obama should be paid.  Oh, yes she should be.  Miss Manners’ views-to-the-contrary notwithstanding, the high-level job of “Job Wife” should not ever have to include duties of the sort that any other professional person, especially persons with penises, would get paid for. 

(Yes, he LOVED it!)

No, not really.  Really I am so *glad* to have this editing job, even though my client keeps rewriting everything after I’ve already checked it.

I told her I’m neither dull nor disciplined enough to be a mere COPY editor, and apparently she believed me.  So really I’m helping someone else write a book, instead of writing my own book. 

Next time I need to charge more though, I think.

Whine, whine, whine. 

Did I also mention I’d pulled a muscle in my back, which makes it really hard to sit down and edit in the first place? 

I’m too young to have a pulled muscle in my back.

Plus also I’m totally going blind and can’t read with one eye when I have my contacts in, and so I might even have a deadly brain tumor.

Because I’m far too young to need reading glasses.

And besides who ever heard of needing reading glasses just for one eye? 

A brain tumor, for sure.

And why am I rewriting this whole book for someone else when I have a pulled back muscle and a brain tumor, you ask?  Why am I not in the hospital instead?

Because getting a pedicure and going out to lunch is a lot more fun.  Cheers!

(Thanks to Kathy for sending me the funny LOL catz photo)

Now I ask you.  Is this any way to treat a poor, stoned dog? 

I leave the helpless animal alone with my 12-year-old daughter for ten minutes, and this is what happens. 

This is why mothers have such mixed feelings about childcare. 

Where was my Nanny-Cam when I needed it? 

This is the pitiful, drugged-out creature parked in a chair next to my computer today.  Jerry had surgery on his paw this morning, and doesn’t want to eat, or drink, or move.  Just gives a pitiful little whine every now and then.

It’s just a wee bit hard to concentrate on my work.

Do you want a drink? A popsicle?  Should I turn up the heat?  Can I get you something to read?  I keep asking him, as I plump up his pillows.  I have several bottles of pills for him, too, which he can’t have until he eats something.

Are you ready to eat yet?  A sausage sandwich, maybe?  Would you like one of the cats?

Pitiful.

I have a deadline in two days, too.  So what do I do… take him to childcare?  Hire a sitter? 

Maybe I should just tell him to snap out of it.  Hey! Come on, Buddy!  You think your life is tough?!?  It was just a glorified HANGnail, for goodness sake.  Get over yourself already!  Hey!  Up and at ‘em!!

Aww, shucks…

A friend Facebooked today re being startled by an office-mate’s cell phone, with a ring tone that sounded like a rooster crowing.

One can only guess at all the potential hazards of being exposed to wild ring tones in a crowded office setting. What about a phone that screams?  Or even farts?   Perhaps we need some sort of legislation…

Wouldn’t you know.

No sooner had I decided to post about Karen Burns’ new book (I’m so proud!!)  than I heard about another new book, also about the world of work, and also available by pre-order discount.

(( Subliminal message: Buy, Buy, Buy!! ))

Plus also,  I’m related to one of the authors. That’s (part of) him in the photo, holding an advance copy.  Woo hoo!

Wired to Care: how companies prosper when they create widespread empathy even has its own website.  Including — OMG — a review by my absolute hero, Malcolm Gladwell.

Way to go, Pete!  And congrats to my dear friend Kathy, who happens to be his mother.

Congratulations to my bloggy pal Karen Burns over at Working Girl!

Her book, The Amazing Adventures of Working Girl: Real life career advice you can actually use is due out in March 2009 but is already available for pre-order on Amazon, for the low, low introductory price of only ten bucks for a nice hardback.  

That’s a third off the regular price.  So pre-order your copy now!

See, pre-ordering is a great way to buy books: publishers want to goose the numbers (and gauge demand) up front, so they offer discounts on pre-orders, and then raise the prices again  closer to publication time.   

For more about Karen’s Fab Book, you can go right here and read about it on her website!