Writing for a Living Sucks
Well, it’s not necessarily so in my case. I mean, I write for a living and I can say it pretty much helps me pay the bills and make ends meet. But writing for a living does have its quirks. For one, there’s the dreaded writer’s block, those times you just feel you have to squeeze out every drop of creativity from your already-numb brain so just you can meet deadlines.
But most of the time, it’s the yearning for respect and acknowledgement that makes for the biggest disappointment in all. True, accomplished writers get respect, but that’s usually very rare, especially in the literary field. Not everyone gets to be a Steinbeck or Hemingway. And yes, sometimes you’d also have to be very dead before you get any serious respect from the community and the public.
As for writing for print and online journals (blogs included), well, it’s a whole new world. Respect doesn’t come around easily. In fact, I can say writing can sometimes be a thankless job. Some people even think you’d have do crazy stuff to get people’s attention.
It kind of feels like writing for the movies:
Even the biz hates writers. When a movie is good, everyone praises the director. When a movie sucks, everyone asks who the fuck wrote this steaming pile of filth. You watch a movie, the credits say: a film by so and so director. Never the writer. Never. It’s like everyone in the biz thinks the writer is just a necessary evil. It’s this auteur theory bullshit going around, making everyone think the director is everything in a movie. -the Man Blog
Here’s to literary rockstardom!
[...] I know I’ve been ranting about writing as a profession recently. Yes, sometimes it does have its low points. But then again, suddenly I feel thankful I’m not working in one of ‘em sweatshops or doing over-overtime in some office building crammed into cubicles along with other corporate drones. [...]
On Second Thought, Writing For A Living Doesn’t Suck » Jack Of All Blogs said this on February 12, 2007 1:57 am