An Open Letter:
From the Perspective of a Struggling Writer
This. This is what I love. What I long to do with my life.
However, doing it and getting paid for it is a whole 'nother thing!
A thing which seems almost impossible.
I've been an avid writer for as long as I can remember; third grade to be precise. From my first book made out of poster boards to writing X-Files scripts saved on floppy disks to writing stick figure comics my friends and I called "Daily Horrors" to college where I really found out that this WHOLE time I was a writer . . . I've come to wonder why it seems to be so hard to write professionally; to do this as a career?
Now, I know that I can go to school to be a journalist or a grant writer or other very specific forms of writing, but what I am, what I want to be paid to do is to write what I want to write. And I don't seem to know who to talk to about doing such a thing; I guess I don't know the right people. I'm told I must work, take care of my daughter, (struggle) and write in my "free time" and then continually pitch my (varied) writing to many publishers which can take months to even hear from in the form of a rejection!
525,000 Things Keeping me from Writing
So this is currently me . . . Doing 12 million things at the same time and almost none of it is writing anything that I actually want to write. Even after finishing my AA and BA I tried to get a good paying job, one worthy of my degrees. However, the best paying job I was offered was to sell tires at Firestone for $13/hr where they "preferred" you to have a BA. Yet, that $13/hr still wouldn't pay for both my living expenses and my student loans. --For the record, my AA and BA are both in Liberal Arts and Science with focuses in English, psychology, and sociology. However, I wrote most of the school paper at my community college and won awards for my research and creativity while working on my BA. I also self-published a novel and a poetry book. However, the publisher just prints your books and then people can buy them online or you can pay them to market it for you or put it into e-book format, etc.
The point here: I know of NO way to be PAID to write . . .
what I WANT to write.
See this desk? It was given to my boyfriend by his parents, but he let's me use it.
However, it's primarily used for homework.
See these cork boards -they're filling with ideas.
I have more writing ideas than I could ever have the time to actually write about.
Because I can't AFFORD to not work; to solely write. Because I don't have the contacts or a publisher who will front me money to take the time to write. The only way I've found that I can write is to pay an institution to "make me" write.
See all of the things I get to read about and write about. None of it is me.
All of it's saying, "Fit into this tiny box that almost no one will look in."
It's not what I want to write about. It's not what will set me apart.
It's not what will make my mark in this world.
But it's all I have.
It's all I can afford . . .
It's what an institution wants me to read and how they want me to write and them telling me what and how to think -and I'm grading accordingly. I have to fit nicely into these little boxes of courses they've chosen to offer (which are slim at best) and designed in a certain way to measure my intellect. However, once I'm done reading and writing the way they tell me to I have to pay back thousands of dollars on top of my already barely-making-it bills. So, there goes any free time to write when I'm done with school and here's to two jobs!
^My expression for what bullshit that is.^
It took almost 2 years to find a job that made (only $2 at that) more than what I made before I even started college . . . yet I had a whooping $450/month loan payment waiting for me. While I suck at math I do not think $2+/hr = $450/month.
Minor 18 Year Setback
Now, there is really one thing that limits me in my ability to relocate in hopes of better connections as that's typically everyone's suggestion: my daughter. She lives with her dad as he has custody; don't even get me started on that. Therefore I am here until she is 18 and goes off the college. Even then some people have already ridiculed me for thinking about moving elsewhere because I should "stay right where I'm at so she has a home to come back to;" as if I'm shunning her from my life? No. She will always have a place wherever I go! Even so, writing would be perfect because you can write from ANYWHERE!!! So long as I'm writing not for a job (which would most likely force me to relocate), but for myself.
Why can't I be a Chuck Palahniuk?
Come on, you know him! He wrote Fight Club -any MANY more amazing novels.
He's even written a comic (that I wrote about for a class), Fight Club 2.
Now I know from reading about him that even he has publishers who say, "No." and "You can do better." But at least he's afforded more freedom than I am and clearly he makes stacks more cash than I do. But how do I become a Palahniuk? A Stephen King? How did 50 Shades of Grey get picked up and now that author makes stacks of cash when I cursed throughout the whole first chapter about how terribly written it was -and NOW it's been made into a movie?!!? If all it takes is writing something like 50 Shades then I can do that! I can do better than that! But how!?
Blessing and/or Curse??
I also have this blessing/curse thing going on -I can write about anything: poetry, short stories, novels, scripts, sitcoms, adaptations, research papers, etc. I need to find a publisher who wants it all. Who let's me do it all. Who embraces the creativity flowing through me and wants it to spill all over blank pages! I'm sick of reading about all of these great thinkers and writers and how they bent or broke the rules and how I should intensely study them and write about them, but told that I have to read, write, and think within this perfect little box . . . ??
People Don't Get It -What it's Like to be a Writer
I need hours, days, months, to be distracted, to not have distractions, to write, revise, edit, engage with others, enclose myself into a cocoon of solitude . . . Too many times have I had great ideas that I've had to jot down and throw up onto my cork boards and say "Sorry pal, not today -or probably tomorrow either. Just sit there till I can get back to ya again! Boy your friend are dusty!!" Because I have work, and maybe other work, and class, and stacks of homework, and my daughter, and my boyfriend, and everyone wants me at their "special events:" birthdays, graduations, weddings, to BE IN their wedding(s), etc.
But oh, what joy would it be if someone said, "What are your current expenses? Here's a check. Write! I've got a publisher who's going to market this and we'll show the world what you've got to offer! I'll even get you a spot on Ellen!"
Hey! There she is waiting for me.
Oh wait, she's not, because I'm not anyone, because I have no connections, because I have so little time, and because things just don't work out like that for me.
Which brings me back to this face again:
What's the point of this post?
Who knows! Me to vent? to make connections? Hopeful that some rich bored person reading this and decides to invest in me? Maybe someone who's made it will have a connection and reach out to me? I don't know. But nonetheless it's helped me blow off some much needed steam . . . Off to finish reading a book that I'm not fond of so I can write scholarly about it and hope to get an A, but I'll probably get a B because the teacher is super hard. And let's face it, when you're told to do something you're not passionate about it's painstaking.
Here's to a dream of a life that surrounds this:
Check Out:
(Facebook) Stephanie Hoover
(Facebook) Real Women of the Quad Cities
(Email Me) Raeliz12@gmail.com
(YouTube) Raeliz12
Books Published: My Post Life
Pretty Much Poems
Unpublished: Angie (a modern adaptation of Antigone)
And many, many more . . .
