It Sure Pays to be a Writer!

Note: If you are a writer, you probably read the title of this post with an all-too-familiar hint of sarcasm. If you're not a writer, go ahead and read that again and just really let the sarcasm drip this time.

Rate of pay at my new writing gig: $1 per article (if it adheres to certain rules), a penny per visitor. You don't get paid until you earn at least $25. Published: 11 articles, Time spent on each article: 2-3 hours, Time invested in getting readers: 1 month and counting. Think I've gotten my first pay check yet?

Look, I'm not complaining, but you know who else gets paid in peanuts? Zoo animals.

Writer's Market

I've decided no more editing! Tomorrow I shall start the laborious search through the Novel & Short Story Writer's Market for literary magazines to send my manuscript to. Wish me luck!

What do you do?

What do you do when you are too lazy to keep up with your fiction writing? Well, try freelance article writing instead. It's so much easier to write a "How To" article because it involves research, facts, steps, introduction, conclusion, etc. All those things we learned in school.
No, really, I actually did write a bit last weekend. Well, re-write actually. I have a short story I want to send to literary magazines, but when I re-read it, I continued to make changes. It'll never be perfect. It gets frustrating when you can't just let it go! All this talk about re-writing calls to mind a scene from Naked Lunch:

Hank: Well, how about guilt re: censoring your best thoughts? Your most honest,
primitive, real thoughts. Because that's what your laborious rewriting amounts to, Martin.
Martin: Is rewriting really censorship, Bill? Because I'm completely fucked if it is.
Bill: Exterminate all rational thought. That is the conclusion I have come to.

Networking

Yet another great night at the library: When The Handshake Is Mightier Than The Pen: A Literary Open House. I get butterflies in my stomach just thinking about attending this event. What sort of people will be there? How do inform people that I write, but am not published? Will there be a lot of young hopefuls such as myself? In this town, will anyone of note actually show up? Should I try to promote my blog? I guess sometimes you just have to take a leap and ignore the jitters. Look for a detailed update after the event (it's not until June 24th)!

Sherlock Holmes (wtf)?

Trust Guy Ritchie to make Sherlock Holmes look like a British gangster:



This has killed any dim hopes of mine that this might be a slightly good film.

I heart Criterion and I heart Netflix!

I know this matters to probably .5 people on the planet, but I just got an e-mail from the Criterion Collection that they have released Wise Blood on DVD! It's one of the hardest Brad Dourif (when he was younger) movies to find. I was considering checking it out on VHS from the university library, but they make you watch the videos in-house and I just never had time. Oh! Netflix here I come.

weird things found at the library

Say you were browsing at the library and in one of the books you came across an invitation for some guy's birthday party and it promised sic free drinks (including alcohol!) and the front had a glamor shot superimposed on to a screen capture from a video game, wouldn't you want to go? I thought so. Sidenote: Whoever this guy is, if he wants more friends/notoriety he should try to get in the Guinness Book of World Records for the most MySpace friends and then maybe get his own reality show (Like a male Tila Tequila). I can almost guarantee he deserves one.

Twitter, twitter, twitter

I was all atwitter today because I had a new follower on Twitter, and so I thought that would give me more blog exposure. Well, it turned out to be a spam account offering a free WalMart gift card. Oh boy! Incidentally, I have now joined Twitter although I refused to ever, ever join. If you want a tweet about my blog updates, please visit Ms. Read @ Twitter!

the library keeps hitler: the unknown artist in storage

I checked out Triumph of the Will from the library because I'm interested in things like propaganda and how people can be manipulated through words and images. My library is self-checkout, but to return it you have to give it to someone at the desk. Well, today was the day to return it but I felt really uncomfortable handing it in because I didn't want my co-workers thinking I was some sort of Neo-Nazi. And then I thought about how yesterday was Hitler's birthday and that it might seem like I watched it in honor of his birthday. So I just kept it. Hey, I don't get charged late fees and I still am interested in watching it. At least I didn't check out Hitler: the Unknown Artist, which is actually a book we keep in storage. And at least I don't share a birthday with him like these unfortunate people.

wasted weekend

Instead of writing this weekend, I played The Sims 2. And, yes, my sim also works on a novel, and yes, she gets more done than I do. I missed the news over the weekend (that's how much I played) that British author J. G. Ballard died yesterday (BBC). I wish I was still at Borders so I could make a display in his honor. I remember watching an interview with him in the dvd extras for Empire of the Sun and being blown away at how straight-laced and personable he seemed considering his often dark subject matter. But then again I've always found that people who write the weirdest, darkest things turn out to be the nicest people on earth.

Oh, another thing...

I thought I had such a clever idea. Years from now--when I'm a blogstar--I was going to start a community for new writers and I was going to call it Novel Novices. Well, come to find out that such a thing already exists. Except, for some inexplicable reason it has to do with Twilight. Shoot! Remind me one day to post a rant about Stephanie Meyer. Although Stephen King pretty much said everything for me, it would still be fun to write.

Ms. Read

In my google quest to find out whether someone already had the id name Ms. Read -- and might one day begrudge me the use of it -- I came across some interesting (sort of) facts:

• Miss Read is the pen name of an English author. Here is a link to her Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miss_Read. I must have been really tired last night cuz I could have sworn she wrote novels in the 1800's, but now that I look her latest book was published in 1996. Not as cool.
  
• Ms. Read is also the name of a plus-sized clothing store.
  
• And Ms. Read is apparently a restaurant/cafe owned by the above mentioned clothing company that is only located in Malaysia (?)
  

Why now?

I am currently musing about the events of the past few weeks which have inspired me to start this blog. On Monday, I started my new job as a technical writer for a local and very small software company. So I could, technically, say that I'm a professional writer. Actually, during the interview process I remember the founders of the company asking me if I ever kept a blog. My response was "I've tried, but my life really isn't interesting enough." Well I guess the events of the past few weeks, this day in particular, have kind of bloated my ego to the point where I've decided to keep one. Whilst working at the library, I ran into a former writing instructor whose first question was, typically, "So have you been working on a novel?" And when I told him no, he told me that I was the best writer he had come across in five years of teaching so how come I wasn't?! Nothing like that compliment to boost said ego. But then there's always the comments from people like my good friend who once said "You should watch Ace in the Hole. I think you'd like it because you're a writer. Well, not really, but you know what I mean."