I have, over the past five years, spent way more than I’ve made, pretending to be a writer. I mean, I guess I shouldn’t complain when people patronize me and treat my writing as a hobby. When you spend a lot of money on a pursuit you can’t very well call it a job. It looks suspiciously like a hobby, I have to admit.
It is more than a hobby, really. The spending is something like paying for a technical school. It’s an investment in education not investment in a hobby. Still, it often feels like money is just going out and there’s not much hope of it ever coming back in.
And yet, who cares? As long as there’s joy in the journey what does it matter if you never make any money at this writing stuff? Today I had lunch with Meg and Suzan and it was so much fun. Whether you’re in the shelling-out-for-your-education phase or the someone-is-paying-me phase, you just can’t beat this writing life. There’s not much better than being able to cruise across town on a sunny spring day and meet with a couple of friends for lunch.
And it’s especially nice to do this while in the no-one-is-paying-me phase because then you can come home and blow off the blog post. Hey you want to complain about this lame post? You get what you pay for, baby. =0)
So last month I met with several writers for dinner. Then last week I met with another group for coffee in a bakery. And today it was lunch at Meg’s house. The cost in time and money is justified, of course, because this is important networking we are doing.
heh heh
This could easily become a habit.
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it’s all a ‘process,’ right? call it what you will, it takes years of learning, lunching, practicing, and revising. I hope. For me. And maybe one day it will be more than a hobby and more of a career.
(except those people who hit a homerun with their very first manuscript they wrote in a week in a log cabin, but please. )
Heh heh heh–sounds like you’ve hit the mother lode. And I toil away in isolated SoCal with no writer buddies to lunch with. Oh, woe is me. Hahah.
Becky
Live anywhere near South Dakota? I sure could use a writer buddy to have lunch with–just moved to the state a few months ago and haven’t met any writers as of yet. (SMILE)
That being said…hang tight…soon you’ll make more then you spend and then you’ll wonder what to do with yourself.
God bless!
Ooh, don’t you just love to hate those homerun-with-the-first-manuscript people, Kelsey?
Now, Becky, how is it possible for one to be isolated in SoCal?
Dabbling, I moved to Atlanta last year, but I moved from Alaska so I’m finding all kinds of writing friends down here. I hope you find some South Dakota writers soon to lunch with.