Writing for a living

From Asoboo - Japan Fiction Writer's Forum

Barbara asked me over the weekend: "How is the writing as a way of making money going for you? I am always curious about that."

It's probably one of those things that writers don't talk about to each other - the money that they make (or more to the point, that they don't). It's estimated that the average Australian writer makes $10,000 a year. I'm guessing though that the average Australian writer doesn't receive $10,000 a year. I expect (having done university standard statistics!) that there are a few writers at the top making some money and it's averaged across the rest of us. In reality, I would be stoked if I made $10,000 this year from writing, but its unlikely?

To date this year I've been paid $45.00 - from the sale of 'Demon Lover'! Don't spend it all at once, my mother would have said once upon a time, in jest. The cheque is still pinned to my noticeboard ... I really must remember to put it in the bank. Obviously I'm not spending it all at once! I have numerous articles either published or about to be in a variety of newsletters and magazines, but like so many of us - its for the love of it, no money will exchange hands for these. It's all about getting published, getting the exposure - we've all told that to ourselves and to those close to us.

For me I find it hard to value myself as a writer, to value the time that's put into writing (and thus make time for it), when there is no monetary return. Don't get me wrong, I'm not interested in making lots of money, I'm not in it purely for the money - it's simply that I'm finally learning that everything has a price, everything has a monetary value and at the moment my writing has very little. We equate something with little value as being worthless - and that's the irony. I don't believe that my writing is worthless. I know that I have the ability to move people, push them in places that they may not want to go ... make them laugh, cry, applaude, hate! I believe my work is most definitley worthy - though my bank balance makes a liar out of me. I'm certain that I am not the only one who feels this way.

Recently I was asked to do some editorial consulting - and I had no idea what to charge. The three years I was at the helm of Down to Birth, it was as a volunteer, it was for the love of it. My friend Catherine, who I was having lunch with, told me that once I began to feel uncomfortable with the dollar amount in my head, I was getting close to my true worth.

But there is very little chance for us as writers to set our price, to feel the discomfort of getting close to our monetary worth. We feel grateful for whatever money gets tossed our way - it's like feeding scraps to stray dogs. Our currency is the glowing comments that we receive ... but it's not dollars in the bank at the end of the day - a collection of wonderful comments wont allow you to give up your day job.

Even if you do strike a big publishing deal - it will be the publishing house that makes all the money - and again, they'll just throw you the scraps ... I don't think as writers we should feel thankful about 10% and 15%s ... after all WE WERE THE ONES THE CREATED IT, in the first place. It is our blood, sweat and tears, the time we've spent away from family and friends. Is that really all we're worth? And like my cheque for Demon Lover - I was ecstatic about $45.00 because it meant something. But is my story only worth $45.00 fee (the standard fee for the short stories they publish.) It's like letting off fire works only to discover they're pissweak, made in China, firelights that go bang really loudly but that's it.

In doing some internet research, I discovered that of the short fiction that is available on the internet - it is no surprise that 99.9% of it is FREE! On blogs, on dedicated fiction sites, as adjuncts to other websites ... I guess that I should feel rather priviledged that Getting Hitched, the site that published my Demon Lover, actually offered to pay for it and followed throug with a cheque!

Occassionally I would like an easy and simple avenue for my work to be published - somewhere my value as a writer is honoured. It's one of those double bind situations, most editors want to see that you've already been published, want some type of guarantee as to your saleability before they take you on board. What if you're still unpublished? What if you haven't manage to find that niche for your writing? And there's the time factor. When you're already hard pressed to find the time to write ... there's editing and then the whole process of submitting work and waiting.

I'm a full time Mum and in days gone by, I would have called myself lazy for the fact that I dont go after the publishing opportunities that may exist out there. The fact is, that after I have written something, I simply file it away. I am busy, not lazy ... all these steps in writing take time and now perhaps I'm overtly focused on the creation side. There is a sizeable back catalogue of work accumulating there, waiting for me to remember that it's there and to do something with it. Perhaps finally I've worked out what to do with it.

There is a saying 'When the going get's tough, the tough getting going' ... but I'm pretty sure it should actually read 'When the going get's touch, the tough get creative'. Watch this space for more ... but until then, what are your thoughts on being paid for your writing?

• Do you believe that short fiction should be available free on the internet or do you believe this undermines the true value of it?
• How would you feel about being PAID to have your writing on the internet rather than offering it up for free?
• Who pays to publish short fiction online?
• Does the mere suggestion of being paid for your writing amp up the cringe factor in your mind? Or is being paid the first milestone to feeling like you are a 'real' writer?

Bird Watching

Our birth photographer Gemma-Rose Turnball has an album on her website called 'Bird Watching.' I remembered that it had pictures that made the ordinary look extraordinary (there's even a photo from my birth in this album!)

I got to thinking about 'bird watching' and what the same type of thing might mean for me as a writer. The inspiration was going along to Dylan's kindy disco on Friday night. It's was a weird juxtaposition - flashing lights and music, the closeness created in a room by the heat of too many bodies and not enough fresh air ... that drag you back to times and places long ago, memories that surface without bidding. Memories that are interupted by a tug on your hand, a strain of the chicken dance music or the mad squeals of a group of kids chasing each other over a grassy knoll. All quite strange.

But the aspect of the whole night that got me, and got me thinking about Gemma's take on 'bird watching' was coming across one particular Dad on the sidelines. He was much taller than me, well over six foot tall, with dark brown hair, messily curling (the way hair does when its outgrown its original cut). He had a good three day growth on his face. He looked rugged, but this wasn't the first thing that caught my eye, in fact it was the last. What originally caught my eye was the black patent leather bag under one arm and the bright pink my little pony being held in the other. The three aspects, rugged looking man, black hand bag and pink stuffed pony should not have been in the same sentence, let along the same space in time, it should not have worked would not have worked in any other place other than a kindy disco.

The last thing that amazed me was how at ease he was, it was if he was oblivious to the fact of what he was actually holding. He could well have been holding a beer, he was that comfortable.

It was the extraordinary in the ordinary.

Yet it almost became my biggest fauxpas. I immediately had to go out and tell someone what I had seen - Dave wasn't with us. The first person I found was another Mum from Dylan's class that I sort of know. I started to gush it out, and then put a disclaimer on it, "Oh I had better be careful, it may have been your husand,' before I embarked once more upon my description. And you betcha .. it was this lady's huband (of the 50 or so families that were there!) But she took it in her stride, she probably took it as a compliment - not to mention that I'm sure she would have been happy to have offloaded her two kids, her hand bag and the my little pony onto him. I know I would have been.

Looking for the extraordinary in the ordinary keeps life exciting, it throws up all manner of possibilities that we're closed to if we wandered through life blinkered by any sense of monotony. The challenge - to go out and bird watch, to scrutinse "for subtle detail in size, shape, plummage and behaviour" and tell us all what you see.

A Giant Falls

This Week’s Theme: Pick a favorite fairy tale or legend. Now briefly describe how you could update it to the modern day. It’s been staged for maximum impact. It’s all in slow motion and I hear Freddy Mercury belting out ‘We are the champions”- like a choose-your-own-adventure music clip. They stride in as the clock strikes the quarter hour, just before the majority of employees leave their work stations for lunch. I look up and see him appear at the end of the corridor, hands cuffed tightly behind him, towering half a foot over each officer that walks beside him. The two officers look comic holding onto one his arms. A plethora of other officers ring him - looking more like munkins than Special Branch officers. There’s absolutely no ambiguity in any of this though, Joseph Fenton is a criminal, but I’ve known that for years. This moment has been ten years in the making. He glares at me as he is escorted past me. I mouth one word to him, ‘Karma’ and there’s no ambiguity in that either. He knows exactly what I mean. It’s only now that he realises, too late, exactly who I am – the son of the man he crucified as a paedophile ten years ago, and then stole his business. It’s not really karma – this is sweet, sweet revenge. I was fifteen when they handcuffed my father at the dinner table and took him away. He never came home again. They allowed him to be beaten to death in the remand centre, before he could even stand trial, to defend himself against the charges, to address the allegations wrongly levelled at him. I know those he shared a cell with would have charged him with being a rockspider. They would have felt justified in removing his type of filth from the face of the earth. But my father was not a paedophile. He was the most gentle and generous man, a businessman with heart, integrity, vision and compassion. Had he been a share trader they would have trumped up charges of insider trading against him. His only crime was that he owned the largest chain of childcare centres and had thwarted the hostile take over bid from Joseph Fenton’s company. The share price plummeted after Dad’s arrest. The plunge wiped out the life investments of thousands of ordinary working families. The centres were bought out by Fenton. He discharged the parent management committees and paid bean counters to increase the profit margins where possible. Dedicated and loving centre staff, who had been part of my father’s company for years, were sacked and replaced with young girls who would work for the minimum wage. They put the fees up and then lobbied the Government, along with parent groups, to increase the amount of Government. Teddy Brown Learning and Development was born when the two companies, what was left of Dad’s and Fenton’s, merged. What had been my father’s vision of creating choice and equality for mothers and families, became a vision for huge share holder profits and enviable Director’s salaries. A year ago Louise Major turned up on my door step. I was packing to move, behind in rent again, unemployed again and about to be evicted – again. A few hours later and she may have lost all trace of me. I knew who she was, with her shock of auburn curls barely contained beneath the head scarf, looking as though she’d stepped straight out of a film co-starring Carey Grant. She was an investigative journalist with a penchant for conspiracy theories, but she wrote well enough, was thorough enough in her research that her articles rarely went unpublished. I also knew that her family had been one of those … who had lost thousands of dollars of hard earned savings, investing in the service that kept their families afloat week to week. Major could talk under wet concrete and didn’t register the word ‘no’. Within half an hour she’d packed me and my meagre belonging into her ancient hatch back and driven us all to her favourite café for coffee – on her! I had nothing and then she gave me something. I still clearly see her taking the manila folder, dog eared and coffee stained from her back pack and sliding it across the table to me. She offered me a few nights on her couch, shared with her long haired, bipolar cat, while I thought about her offer. I was homeless and jobless – there was only one thing I had to loose. I took the folder to Mum – I needed her blessing. She had taken it all harder than she allowed anyone to believe – most of all me. The mask she wore was impervious to the stares, or the snide utterances under peoples’ breath. She belonged to a generation who remembered, even though she tried desperately to forget. It always got around that she was Ben Beanscovich’s widow – and she was forced to Brown his dirty legacy. After a time she stopped changing her name and went back to the name she’d assumed for better or worse. Mrs Beanscovich only acted the martyr now. I knew she was heart broken - not by what Dad had supposedly done, but because she doubted him - still. She took her time in reading the evidence that Major had come up with … and the proposition. An hour later she got up, filled the kettle and put it on the gas. “This is frivolous,” she finally said, after the tea had steeped for the proper amount of time and she’d poured us both a cup. “What’s done is done. You can move your stuff back in here until you get up on your feet again.” The next morning I retrieved the folder from her plastic step bin and went to sleep on Major’s hairy, manic depressive lounge. And I became Jack Smith, newly arrived personal assistant from New York City. I perfected the accent in two weeks, while the real Jack Smith lay two suburbs over in a coma. Major swore it wasn’t identity theft – she sweet talked me and my conscious with promises that we were merely borrowing. It was a necessary means to an end. Major set me up with a motel room in the city. With all the necessary paperwork organised, I walked into Jack Smith’s job in Teddy Brown Development and Learning. Sooner than I expected I began the climb up the corporate ladder. I knew that it could be nothing less than Fenton’s own personal assistant for Major’s plan and my own teenage yearnings to see the light of day. I made my self indispensable to Fenton, even though I wasn’t officially assigned to him. But that was just one part of it. We began the process of acquiring small lots of shares in the company, until our combined slush fund ran out. I suggested Jillian, Fenton’s daughter. As a chip off the old block, she’d fallen as far from the block as possible. Where Fenton was bombastic and over bearinging, Jillian had a quiet groundedness about her. I got the impression that she was just biding her time and that she could hold her own, even in the old man’s shadow. It was a risk that I was willing to make. I invited her to dinner and I laid out the contents of Major’s folder for a second time. She could have done many things, but I didn’t expect her to bury her head in her hands and sob. I’d expected a wild backlash, an apology … I fantasised about her hugging me wildly and immediately throwing her support behind me. “I tried to pretend that I didn’t know,” she said, from somewhere within her hands. “I wanted to be glad that it was them and not me.” “He never touched you?” She shook her head and looked across the table to where I sat, the guilt of knowing flowing down her cheeks. “He only likes little boys, but still ….” With Jillian’s recently matured trust fund, we set about buying up small lots of shares again, until we almost reached critical mass … a controlling share in Teddy Brown Development and Learning. By then I had ingratiated myself into one Fenton’s personal assistant roles. Jillian downloaded everything she’d found over the years, some from Fenton’s ghost drives, as ripples started to spread outwards through the share market that there was a new player for Teddy Brown. We’d been discrete … a shelf company in the Cayman Islands. And that in itself must have put the wind up Fenton. You can’t bribe, or undermine on moral grounds a faceless entity. As I bought up his long black that morning, I’d assured him that it was nothing to worry about and he’d smiled, as if my word meant anything. “Thank you Jack,” he’d said and taken a long sip from the steaming hot Gloria Jean’s cup. “I think today will be a good day.” He always swore that he could literally ‘smell out’ a competitor; he prided himself on this ability. ‘That’s how I got rich’, he’d joked to me one afternoon when he’d invited me to share single malt with him after the posting of record quarterly results. ‘That and knowing every man’s weakness. That way you can grind their bones to make your bread.’ That afternoon, with the warm whisky coursing through my veins I’d been tempted to add ‘like Ben Beanscovich’s’ but I didn’t trust my nerve. How the police got involved I’m not sure. With the controlling interest in our hands, the photographic and internet tracking proof of Fenton’s online activities, the stage was set. I mouth one word to him, ‘Karma’ and there’s no ambiguity. Jillian squeezes me hand. Fenton knows exactly what I mean. It’s only now that he realises, too late, exactly who I am – the son of Ben Beanscovich who he murdered ten years ago, with his own secret network of paedophiles … and I have his daughter Jillian beside me. She’s singing the same tune as me. Jillian pushes through and spits in her fathers eye. She is ready to be resurrected, as her father falls on his own sword. The press miss all of this. They’re downstairs baying like hunting hounds … seeking blood. Fenton is escorted out through the front doors. There are no short cuts to protect him. The interpersonal play is left to Major to report – this alone is hers. We’ve promised her that. As we sit down, over curry and beer that night Major smiles at me. “You never suspected,” she says. “It’s the perfect cover. Special branch and all of that.” “But surely …” “Louise,” I say, using her first name because I know she will shut up and pay me the attention I’m due. “Did you never ask yourself, just how you came by all that information in the first place, all those pictures in that manila folder?” And she just stares back at me. If you can pick the fairy tale and the matching elements ... please comment! I'm fearing I've taken obtusement (If that's even a word) to a whole new level!
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Charlie the Wonder Dog

Who is Charlie the Wonder Dog - well here you go. And just so you get what its all about ...

From Wikipedia:

"Charlie the Wonderdog was a series of short episodes which first aired during The Late Show's second series. Charlie was a parody of fictitious animal shows, such as Lassie and Skippy the Bush Kangaroo in which the animal regularly ends up saving the day. Charlie was a dog owned by Gleisner.

The sketch featured purposely bad overacting from the children and usually involved an unimposing villain or disaster (such as a "poacher" stealing "native fauna" - sticks and twigs - from the bush) that had to be prevented. The actors would constantly praise Charlie as a highly intelligent "wonder dog", in contradiction of the behaviour of Charlie himself, who regularly had to be dragged around by a rope to perform stunts. When the dog was required to bark to alert the others of danger, obvious overdubbing was used over footage of Charlie with his mouth closed or looking distracted.

As the series went on, the problems and situations that Charlie faced became more and more over the top. Charlie was eventually assassinated in one of the sketches, only to come back in the Charlie the Wonderdog Christmas Episode.

Charlie the Wonder Dog ... along with Shit Scared were two of my favourite segments on the iconic The Late Show.

When did you know you were a writer?

Janie over at Write Stuff proposed the following questions to us this week:

"When did you know you were a writer? Was there a moment or period in your life when you realized that you were meant to write? Did a specific event or occurrence compel you to write? Or, like me, have you just always considered yourself a writer?"

My answer is both simple and complex. I remember when I first felt the love for writing. It was 1984, the year of the Los Angeles Olympics. The year that Willy was our Australian Olympic mascot. I was in my second last year of primary school and I must have been 10. We were writing small stories about the exploits of Willy in LA. I wrote one, then another and still another. From there I began writing at home, on one of my mothers cheap lined note pads (used predominately for writing the weekly shopping list) a story about a dog, a golden labrador that lived on a farm. He wasn't like Charlie the Wonder Dog (for those Aussies old enough to remember the D Gen's The Late Show from the early 90's) he was just a dog and it was just a farm. I must have written 10 or 11 pages before I stopped writing.

I found an alternate escape from the world - an escape where I could play God ... which I never really got over (he reminds me of the scene in Overboard where Goldie Hawn's husband says 'At Sea I am a God' and the psychiatrist who happens to be aboard offers to give him a couple of his own valium!) Writing is the ultimate escape hatch - you create the world, the characters and the scenarios that are played out - you choose who wins and who loses (which was big for me as a serial victim of bullying at high school), who is the hero, the heroine, the evil mastemind.

In the summer of 1985 I was staying with my cousin and read my first (and only) Sweet Valley high novel (and I use that term exceedingly loosely). I was appalled at how pathetically it was written and how it really wasn't what life was like. I went back to my Nanna and Pa's and began writing what would be my first novel ... about life and loves of a 13 year old. Over that summer I wrote about 130 A4 pages. I loved every minutes of it and in 1988 when we moved to Queensland I rewrote the novel. I would take the dog and my writing folder down to the beac and we'd hang out there writing (Oakey chewing on coconut husks) until it was time to go home for dinner. In that novel was my safe space while I went about creating a new social space among new friends in a new high school. I still have both handwritten manuscripts downstairs.

Even though I have always known that I loved writing, and have wanted to have it as a 'career' - it took 15 years after finishing highschool to make the big decision to 'just write.' It was last year on the full solar eclipse of the Virgo moon (my natal moon) when it occurred to me that I didn't need to decide whether to return to paid work or not, if I wanted to study and what I wanted to study, plus how all of that would fit around having a child ... I could write. It made such sense for the first time ever. So I did ... and I haven't stopped since.

Finding Write Stuff in late September last year and Fiction Friday opened up creative avenues that bypassed all the hurdles I regularly threw up for myself, so I wouldn't write - lack of ideas, inspiration - blah blah blah. I discovered a great love for short stories that was probably lost through creating them in high school english class for marking. I stopped trying to write the best selling novel, or finding the perfect plot ... I just sat down to write each Friday night and waited to see what magic flew from my fingers ... good magic and crap magic alike. One short story at a a time.

I spent 15 years making up excuses why I couldn't write - and after a certain amount of time you either give up totally, buying into the delusion that you have created for yourself or you stop making excuses and create a writing reality for yourself. The end of the excuses came in December last year - when I made the decision to give up my editorship of Down to Birth magazine - the end of my shadow artist. I would now only invest in me, my writing and whatever the future held for both of us. I stopped running, I looked myself square in the eye and believed that I had the tenacity and the talent to suceed.

The tool box

Sadly, as I'm writing this, I have the backpack song from Dora the Explorer playing away in my head ... but I digress (sorry to anyone who knows this song and now has it stuck in their heads!)

Steven King refers to the writers 'toolbox' in his book 'On Writing'. For months I wrote in my morning pages about finding the 'right' satchel to carry everything around in, as I didn't have a proper bag. Thus I never had a novel with me to capitalise on those few spare moment when waiting in line. My note book was always in a different bag, so I lost countless ideas and snippets and my ecosilk shopping bags were always hung up at home meaning their plastic comrades were planning to mount an offensive from their position in their pantry (given their superior numbers!)

In the weeks leading up to our holiday in Tasmania and Victoria I started dreaming about getting this perfect satchel. There would be room for my novel and my notebook, my recently purchased SLR camera, my eco silk bags, a bottle of water, my lip balm ... you get the idea. My idea was to go to the Queen Victoria Markets in Melbourne and find 'this perfect bag.'

It's sad to say that I wrote quite a few lines in my morning pages about this perfect page ... no images of what the perfect bag looked like, just what the perfect bag would hold and what it would do for me as a writer!

Amazingly enough, we walked into the markets the day before we flew out of Victoria. Leanne, my Dad's wife took me straight to the bag seller - the Italian House of Leather, and I started to have a look around. Within a couple of minutes I'd found a leather backpack, did a spot of bargaining, and got it for just under the budgeted price. Voila! I was the proud owner of 'the perfect satchel.'

Since then - I haven't been caught out without my shopping bags and our collection of plastic shopping bags is slowly diminishing - I think we're safe from the revolution they were planning. I always have my novel with me (I make a habit of putting it in my bad before I leave the house) which meant on Saturday while I was waiting in the extra long BBQ line at a school fete, I could whip out my book and read three or four pages until it was my turn to collect our lunch. My lips are much happier (especially coming into winter) for the ever ready supply of rose scented lip balm from Perfect Potions ... and well I do have to admit that I lost my little purple book for all my writing ideas at the grocers last week, but it has been replaced and used. While I'm probably not as vigilant as I should be at writing down ideas (its been a life long habit to store them in my head), I am getting much better at it. And there is both room for my camera (meaning I've snapped a few shots I would never have got) and a water bottle. It's taken a little getting used to the extra weight on my back - but its well worth it.

The right equipment as a writer may be, as in my case, the right bag to carry the tools around in ... because the world of a writer does exist beyond the keyboard.

What is the one writers tool, other than your computer, that you simply could not do without?

Led Zepplin Disco Ninja

Yes you read correctly ... Led Zeppling Disco Ninja was how Ross Noble came out on stage tonight describing himself. His long curly brown, going-to-dreadlocks, hair makes him a dead ringer for a 70's rocker. Then there was the shirt - the black flared at the wrists shirt with groovy electric blue, flame like embellishments at the sleeve ... and then there was the black pants and the electric blue shoes.

The man is a dynamo of a comic. He comes to the gig with three jokes and that's it. All the rest is ad lib ... through audience participation and his own brand of split personality acting/laughfest, impersonation, mime, a bit of singing in there.

And he goes ... and goes and goes and goes. There seriously has to be energiser batteries in the man. He did just over an hour set in the beginning, the there was intermission, another hour or more ... plus questions at the end.

The stalker lady from Spicks and Specks was there - she saw 32 of the Spicks and Specks live shows (now that's creepy) last year. She's only going to see Ross twice - probably lucky for him.

I thought I would laugh more, or laugh harder ... it was just one constant laugh. Dave had tears streaming out his eyes. It was either the comedy or the pain in his back (possibly a combination of the two)

I'd love to reminisce more about the Algerian national anthem, of bum dancing in taxi, Hippogimps, Nanna Jelly Sex and other suck delights from the show - but its well past midnight and I need more beautiful sleep.