June 1st, 2010

Jobs for Writers, part 2 of ?

Every time I try to write about this subject, I get uncomfortable–so much as just what works for the individual writer. Some people really need to have a job they love a lot, even it it’s just a “day job,” or they can’t be motivated to get up in the morning. Some writers would rather not like their jobs all that much, or they “day job” winds up distracting from the writing. Some would rather work part time and have half of every day to write; some people will work nonstop for part of the year and not even touch their manuscripts, then have a big block of time to write and do nothing else (teachers!)

Whatever is functional for you, do that. But, as I told the students at that careers event that sparked all this ages ago, I’ve had a lot of jobs and some were more functional for me than others, so maybe there’s something people could learn from that! I mean, as Ms. Difranco says, “Nobody likes their job / nobody got enough sleep” but below are some things that let me write and even helped with some projects, as well as helping me to be reasonably happy with my life and lifestyle while I was working there.

Bookstore salesperson was the first job I ever had that I didn’t utterly loathe; it was shocking. What did I like about it? The obvious, first off: getting to hang out with books, seeing the new stuff first, the world’s most useful-to-me employee discount and other book-related bonuses. I sometimes liked chatting with customers about what they might like to read, though you still do get your jerks and your people who want “the thing that was on the radio this morning, about that dog? What do you mean you don’t listen to the radio?” I found the running around of the job, and all the chitter-chat with customers was a good balance to the sedentary silence of writing.

Less obvious perks were that, unlike most minimum-wage retail jobs, this one drew a wider range than after-school teenagers. Lots of bookish adults (including other writers) worked there and were fun to talk to–actually, even the after-school teenagers were pretty bright and well-read.

Most of the downsides of this gig may have come from the fact that I worked for a couple big chain stores. I’ve never had an indie bookstore job, unfortunately, but since I’ve known a lot of folks who did, I can make a reasonably educated guess that those jobs are more fun, though not much better paid. One issue was that the stores were mamoth, and floor staff and cashiers were forbidden to sit or, heaven forbid, read. There was always something to run to the back for, something to dust or scrub or carry–and books are heavy. After 8.5 hours darting about on concrete floors, I often had little energy left for writing. And no matter how literate, retail is retail–you can’t really live on minimum wage unless you are working a bloody lot of hours, you likely won’t have benefits, customers feel free to treat you like a moron and (sometimes) so do managers. Low points of my bookstore career include being berated by a customer for getting a mystery author’s name wrong, being berated by a manager for wearing a candy necklace, and being berated by everyone once I started working at the special orders desk because it, despite the big sign, apparently looked like a complaints desk.

Library clerk was basically a less capitalistic, more relaxed, better paid version of the bookstore job. You occasionally got to do some fun cool book-tracking-down, occasionally got screeched by a crazy person, but mainly as long as you got your work done, you were allowed to do what you wanted (ie., read). I guess I can’t vouch for every library (this was an academic one), but there was no “keeping up appearances” busywork, which was really nice. Downsides? Well, it could get a bit dull on some days, and on others, because it is a public place, a library attracts the sorts of people who get chased out of malls (teenaged hooligans, the homeless, the ranting, unsupervised children) and the staff has to deal with them as best they can. From what I hear, most library jobs have a strong hiking-around-carrying-books component as exhausting as at a bookstore, but I actually had a desk-sitting gig. Once again, this was a desk that people frequently mistook for the complaints area, despite another big sign, so I came in for more than my share of yelling, but at least I had a comfy chair. The real trouble with library gigs is that they are limited in scope, hard to come by and rarely full-time–I left the one I had because I was graduating and it was a student position. If you are seriously interested in being an actual librarian, you need a degree in library science–fascinating, but surely not easy.

Teaching is, as judged by per-hour strain, the hardest job I have ever had. I have tutored ESL, TA’d essay writing and literature, and taught high school students how to write short-stories, and all were fall-on-the-couch exhausting. Deeply rewarding, mind, but exhausting. And of course, the biggest danger with teaching is that, unlike waiting tables (the second-hardest job I’ve ever had), you can’t just eventually say “Screw it, it doesn’t matter,” with a given class, student, semester, etc. Because it does matter, so much, what you teach kids (or anyone, really) so the temptation exists to put in the overtime, do the extra projects, come out for the sports teams, and put everything you can into it, because the kids will get so much (or at least something) out of it. This is, of course, deadly if you are trying to write in your “off” hours.

This post was original going to include some of the silly things people say about jobs for writers (“You should just do a little journalism to make money!” Last time I checked, journalism was a four-year degree and a competitive field, and also not overflowing with money) but I am (mainly) not doing that because it’s too annoying. One thing that I will put in is that I once read a writer profile that said that once one had published a relatively successful book, one could get creative-writing teaching jobs and “make a living as a writer.” I am sure any teacher reading this will recognize this as offensive–if one is teaching, one is making a living as a teacher. Which is actually still amazing for one’s writing–students will challenge so many standard assumptions about writing and bring you all kinds of new energy and ideas, so it is totally worth the exhaustion if you can figure out how to teach briefly or temporarily or somehow not have it overrun all your time. But if you take a teaching gig under the impression that it is basically a grant with a bunch of annoying students hanging around, said students will become incredibly embittered and if they are lucky, hate only you and not actually writing. Just sayin’.

You may have noticed here that none of these jobs are incredibly well-paid and my standards of “fun” are pretty low (ie., not getting yelled at). That is because I have left out of here all the jobs I had that didn’t work out at all, including the fast food restaurant where hooligans regularly stole the mirrors out of the bathroom, the factory that turned out was actually some guy’s bedroom, and the fancy restaurant where the enormous wall-mounted ketchup dispenser exploded. And the time one of my fellow chambermaids seemed to be considering taking a swing at me with the carpet sweeper. So possibly I am not the best person to be getting career advice from–please chime in if you have other jobs to suggest to writers, or would like to contradict anything I’ve said (nicely).

I’ll do another post on the wonderful world of publishing soon, and that will pretty much be the sum of my knowledge.

May 25th, 2010

Jobs for writers, part 1 of ?

You may have been wondering about what happened to that whole “jobs for writers” post I promised to write  (so long ago it was on a whole different site). What happened was I attended that UofT graduating students careers event and was really humbled by the breadth of skills, ambitions, backgrounds, and lifestyles the students had. They all came from and were going to wildly different places, both from each other and from me, and the idea that I could give them much in the way of advice seemed pretty perposterous.

And yet they were really open to hearing what had worked for me and what hadn’t, so I hope I at least saved them some false starts and offerened some good ideas (and some laughs). For me, it was a reminder that however modest (or infuriating) my accomplishments may seem, they would have been inconceivable to me ten years ago and so I should be proud. However, I’ve been reading the advice to myself 10 years ago posts around the web inspired by Steven Heighton’s 10 Year Memoranda. There’s a lot of good advice in these, like “12   Because you want your work to have a teeming subconscious.  In your early drafts, write everything that occurs to you, then cut ferociously.  The material you cut—the rich or jagged silences you create—are the textual subconscious.” But I think this sort of thing is a rhetorical exericse that, if taken literally, might overestimate a human being’s ability to actually follow advice.* Because when I was 22, you could have told me 1000 times that rough drafts are the block of wood out of which one hews a final sculpted story–I would still have thought a rough draft that sucked was a story that couldn’t be saved. It took individual stories that I couldn’t bear to see die, and friends and teachers who knew how to edit and did it to me against my will, plus lots and lots of agony before I could believe what Heighton says–actually, I forget this lesson pretty much every week and have to reteach myself. Just because someone knows and is will to share his knowledge doesn’t mean anyone can gain it by reading/hearing it.

May 11th, 2010

Career Notes: Everybody sad!

I think at my career-talk thingy on Thursday, I am going to be asked about how I balance writing stories and earning a living. My glib answer is “badly,” but my non-glib answer is not too much better–I do what I can, sleep less than I want, miss parties I’d enjoy, I don’t own a car, cellphone, cat, or cable box, and have truly demented tax returns. But judging by the state of the bloggersphere today, everybody is miserable in this situation. So I’m in good company, and at least I’m not injured:

Mark reports on AL Kennedy’s description of the writing life composed of exhaustion, obsession and back pain.

AJ comments on Geoff Pevere’s description of the writing life as composed of networking, being ignored, and self-doubt.

Amy comments on the writing life of trying to find a totally un-writing-related job to support the writing. I like how Amy is positive and puts the pros of the situation before the cons, albeit after the eye-gouging reference.

So what am I really gonna tell the kids on Thursday? That if you want to do a thing that doesn’t pay much (or sometimes anything) you will have to do another thing that pays at least something, to balance it out, at least for a while. And while yes, that can suck the life right out of you and make you just want to lie down and have a little nap at the bus stop or the grocery store, it can also be stimulating and exciting to be in two different worlds. And a workaday job, as opposed to writing, will introduce you to new people, help you learn to work as part of a team, expose you to ideas you did not think of yourself, and more than likely offer at least some cake.

This might be aggressive silver-lining searching from someone writing this blog post as her sole creative outlet this week, as she spends her days editing and her nights marking teenager stories (Bulletin: I have learned about the teens: they like the video games. Also: weird fonts.) But there’s always gonna be tradeoffs, and quite often I get to write for a few hours at a time. At least, that’s what I tell myself.

I think I’m going to do a post on “Jobs for Writers.” I’ve had a lot of different ones, but not nearly all that are out there–please send comments if you’ve had a particularly good, or particularly bad job-writing fit that we can all learn from.

Back to work!
RR

May 10th, 2010

The News

So the news is, in case you have not been picking up on my extremely subtle hints, that Rose-coloured is moving to its very own dedicated URL with a splendid new design from Create Me This, and life is good. Ok, life is actually incredibly hectic, so I’ve been building up to the big unveiling by not posting much–I’m sure you’ve been crushed by my silence. But see below–lotsa cool stuff:

1) May is the Month of the Short Story. I sort of knew this last year, but not really, because I spent most of May in Japan, where was probably not the Month of the Short Story and even if it was I wouldn’t have understood. Anyway, I definitely know it this year because Steven WB has moved 31 Days of Short Stories to now and that’s so amazing. Although my first thought when I saw the first post was, “Hey, that’s not until August!” I have a hard time with change. At least it’s not one of those 30-day months or I would really have lost it.

2) Amy asks (in the comments on the last post) what I say when I’m asked by a random person at a party what I do–writer or editor. It depends on the party–I go to a lot of parties where people are both writers and editors and other artistic people and sympathizers. In *that* crowd I always say writer (if we talk for long, the other will come up though) because they are likely to get it and be nice about it. *However* if the party consists of people of unknown professions, I say “editor” because I’m scared they will be mean to me if I say “writer.” That’s, mind you, a stupid stereotype of people in the non-obviously creative professions (in fact, most people need to be creative to get their jobs done). However, some people *are* dismissive, and I get really sad when someone, even a random stranger, is mean about my writing. It’s like they insulted my significant other–the conversation cannot go on. And although rare, this *has* happened.

Pharmaceutical exec: So, what do you do?
Me: I’m a writer. I had a book of stories come out in 2008.
PE: A writer? Really, so you just sit around and write all day?
Me: Well, actually…
PE: Man, that would be great–sleep in, make coffee, write a little story. No crazy commute, no DVP, no stress..
Me: Well, actually…
PE: (long detailed discussion of PE’s exact route to work, timing, possibility of accidents, etc. Seriously, 10 minutes!) A writer, wow, I should get on that. That would be the life. No stress at all! You wouldn’t believe what I have to put up with.
Me: You must wish you were dead.
PE: What?
Me: I wish *I* were dead?
PE: What?
Me: Oh, look, the hostess just put out a new kind of cheese. Excuse me.

Ok, I might have made a little tiny bit of that up, but largely, it’s accurate, and so very depressing. I’d rather just say “editor” and talk about my bus route to the office. Which makes me, I know, a giant wuss, but it’s less stressful by far.

3) Lindsay has a new website too, and it’s really pretty. Spring is the time of web renewal, apparently!

More to come soon, I promise–and brace yourself for the big change (I think this is a change I will be able to handle) of URL, coming soon!

RR

January 21st, 2008

Librarians

When I was a wee one, what I wanted to be when I grew up, more than anything, was a librarian. I felt it drew together my love of books and my obsessive organizational tendencies so perfectly. I was as serious about this dream as possible for a grade-schooler–I alphabetized my own books, rigorously dusted my parents’ shelves (I was not allowed to reorganize them, as my father had his own arcane system) and volunteered at the library every day after school until, as often happens in these tales, I lost interest when I entered high school. And though, when at libraries, especially when I worked (civilian position) at one, I often admire the work of librarians, and think fancifully of what they might do in a day, I am pretty sure that I lack a number of personal qualities, not to mention the years of training, necessary to make a good librarian. The patience, the pedagogy, the knowledge of catolguing and archival systems, the interpersonal skills necessary to deal with the public at all levels of knowledge–what an incredibly demand job. No wonder I didn’t rise to it.

I try to remember this when a librarian tells me that the edge of my shoe is touching the couch, in a cooing voice that clearly implies that I am not only a heathan but a moron.

And recreate a place in my own world
RR