Week 29 - Close Shave

 

Update –Things got a little rough for a while, but I’m back on track for the moment. I’ve started a new story! Or a book. We’ll see how long it runs. If it peters out I have two others waiting in the wings, plus the rewrite of the detective book. I just wrapped up another assignment and nothing’s on the docket for the moment so, barring unforeseen circumstances, I should be able to get some work in. Just gotta keep that motivation going.

Here’s something you don’t get with too many professions: Monday I had to take my car in for inspection. I usually schedule it for the afternoons, then go up after their lunch break and wait around for them to finish (no rides available, and the garage is too far to walk to). This time around I took a notebook and my purse’s pen collection and got some writing in. Fortunately nobody asked to see it. Picture this if you will: in a world of electronic devices I sat and wrote, in longhand, a gay romance between two supernatural beings, in a garage owned and operated by Mennonites. That sounds like the plot of a book in itself. Or a romcom. Or a Hallmark movie. Beats the hell out of office work, even though the pay sucks. Come to think of it, so does the pay for office work. But I can work wherever now, with no annoying coworkers. There are times when I absolutely love being a writer.

$$$$

And other times when I don’t. This also happened last week. It actually started a week or two before. I get paid for my assignments on a monthly basis. Payout varies, depending on how many assignments I get and how long (word count) they are. I mentioned previously that in June I had a number of overlapping assignments, and some of them were long ones. I had myself a nice, hefty paycheck coming, which I could use to start paying down my emergency credit card. Or cover the cost of that car inspection. Or get my furnace repaired, because it turns out the thermostat wasn’t the problem after all. I’m putting that off until September. Payments have been coming in around the same time I get my Social Security, so most bills get put off until both come in and I can make a budget. On a good month I get spare cash and give the cards a break. That’s what the card was originally for, to handle medical and unexpected bills while SS and the paying job took care of the usual stuff. Life hasn’t worked out so simply. Thanks a bunch, inflation.

Anyway, I checked my bank balance on “payday.” Social Security showed up right on time. The amount for June’s work didn’t. I wasn’t that worried at the time. They’d taken their time updating my spread sheet, so I figured transfers would be running late. The outfit’s headquartered in Texas, which got hit by Hurricane Beryl right around that time. I heard reports of thousands of people left without power. I figured I could hold off for a bit.

A few days later they updated the spreadsheet. Okay, I’d get my money now. Checked the bank balance. No increase. I returned an assignment and mentioned in passing I hadn’t been paid yet. The company didn’t respond. More days passed. Another assignment came in. I made another mention of my missing money. Again, there was no response.

Here’s the downside to having a writer’s mind: my paranoid imagination concocted a whole slew of possibilities, all running along the lines of I'm screwed. They’d gone out of business. The company declared bankruptcy. The owner had an emergency and stiffed me to pay bills. The owner stiffed me, period. I wouldn’t be getting any money from them ever again. I was going to get hit with massive interest payments because I wouldn’t be able to pay down the credit card. I’d have to find another job. At my age, in my physical condition. I worked myself up into one pretty tizzy, got panicky and depressed and ate a lot food that’s bad for me. I wasn’t even this upset over the cancer scare. But then, I’ve had health issues involving surgery before and everything turned out fine. I’ve also abruptly lost jobs before, with the job market, and my paycheck, shrinking with every year I aged. This time there wouldn’t be any unemployment (part-time work as an independent contractor) or borrowing from family (they’re all dead or scattered). Not to mention I still had the new assignment, with no guarantee I’d even get paid for that, so should I work on it or not? Yeah, that was definitely a dark several days.

I selfishly indulged in despondency for a weekend, then did what I should have done at the outset: contacted the owner directly and asked them where my money was. By now we’d gone a week beyond the end of the pay period. It was unquestionably late, so if my email got a little testy in spots (though I did my best to keep it polite and professional) I figured I was justified. And this time I did get a response. The owner told me she’d failed to verify whether the transfer went through. She sent it again, with a screenshot to prove she’d done so. Within 24 hours I had my money and was able to pay off all my monthly expenses without having to resort to the credit card. Damn, it felt great to do that.

The minute I learned I still had a job and would be receiving my pay, my depression disappeared. I actually felt it dissolving. It was like I’d been reborn into a bright new world. I was rejuvenated. I finished the assignment and went back to writing my own stuff. Life was good again. Having paid bills and cash on hand, if only for a month, will do that to you.

I didn’t have to go through this. All the negativity could have been avoided if I’d done what I’d sworn to do back at New Year’s—write a book a month and start submitting to publishers, or learn how to self-pub and get ’em out there anyway. With backup income streams I wouldn’t have panicked like that. You can’t write when you’re depressed. You can’t do much of anything when you’re depressed. You do even less when you get complacent. Everything’s going fine, so why wear yourself out with extra work? Because life happens, that’s why. Companies go out of business. People get fired. Things break down, including your body. You need to work like hell during the good times because the good times can go bad in an instant. I didn’t, and got hit in the face with the consequences of my own inaction.

This isn’t the first time I’ve been in this spot. Maybe, just maybe, I’ve finally learned my lesson and will get off my ass and start prepping so I’ll be financially secure when the next disaster hits. If the books don’t sell, that’s okay; I’ve got loads of old comic books and some other memorabilia from my collecting and con-going days. They’re not in mint condition, but some of them ought to be worth at least a month’s rent and grocery money. I can always drop cable, too. It’s not like anything’s on.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to work. Get those stories written, polished and out the door. And keep a close eye on my bank account. See y’all next week.  

 

Weeks 27 & 28 - Vindication

 

Update – First of all, I want to thank however many of you—yes, even the bots, and especially you, Switzerland—are actually reading this thing. I’m sorry I’ve let you down. This was supposed to be a blog about me trying to write a book a month over the course of a year. Mostly it’s been one long whinefest of me making excuses and the various creative ways I’ve discovered how to procrastinate. Every now and then I do actually write something, and I did sub the book I’m STILL working on, so it hasn’t been a total loss.

But there’s not much of an update to give because over the last two weeks I haven’t done all that much. June pretty much got eaten up by a mass of overlapping paid assignments—which, to date, I haven’t been paid for. The publishing house is HQ’d in Texas, which has been having problems lately, with hurricanes, flooding, power outages and heat waves. For all I know, the owner is one of the millions of Texans currently without power. Or maybe the bank they use to transfer my money has fallen off the grid, or been washed away. Meanwhile, my ten-year-old furnace has picked right now to have an expensive breakdown, so I could really use that paycheck. Those of you with jobs, start saving NOW. You’re going to need that money down the road, because Social Security won’t pay enough to live on. Assuming it even still exists by the time you turn 65.

I have been going through my old notebooks, and I have uncovered a couple of ideas I want to explore and maybe even turn into quickie books for much-needed cash. But first I have to write them, which for me is clearly the tricky part. I want to say I’ll get my butt in gear and do better, but I can’t give any guarantees. Remember, I’m a writer. We make things up for a living.

$$$$

While screwing off watching YouTube one day—one of the reasons I haven’t written anything but flash in the last two weeks—I came across this video, “My Ex Literary Agent Told the Truth” by a writer going by BBG. The words “literary agent” grabbed my attention so I tuned in. I’ve forgotten how to make links and don’t want to bother with experimenting, so just go to YouTube, type in the title in Search and it’ll pop up. That does work.

Briefly, here’s his tale of woe: his agent invited him out to lunch (her treat, even) and told him she might be able to sell his fantasy book to a subsidiary line of a major Big 5 publisher. However, he would have to make certain changes: 1) change the B-plot romance to a gay relationship and make it more important to the story; 2) de-age the adult protagonists to better fit a Young Adult/New Adult audience; and 3) emphasize the writer’s own sexuality (which he didn’t go into, but let’s assume it’s not straight) when marketing the book. Nothing was said about racial diversity, but that’s okay. If there aren’t any main characters of color, they’ll just put something symbolic on the cover. Worked for Twilight.

In short, the publishers weren’t looking for well-written books, they were looking to check trendy boxes. As the agent told the writer flat out: “They have a quota.”

At which point I nodded my head at the screen and uttered a sigh of relief that I’d missed out on the Berkley open call. I wasn’t being paranoid or defeatist. My adult-themed fantasy with the straight, white male protagonist and his romance with an equally straight white woman is probably unsellable in today’s market, at least if I try to go through traditional publishing. It probably wouldn’t even make it past the query stage. Maybe not even past the agent stage. Not without serious rewrites. I do have a tough prominent female character who, if you squint hard enough, might pass for a lesbian, but since the only other woman in the book is technically her sister there’s no chance for romance there. The new lead would have to be the black kid, the nephew of the writer who created the only black character in the story. Nope, hold on a sec. He’s straight and male. Better gender-swap him. Now the black writer’s niece and the blonde white lesbian can have a steamy romance while solving the mystery. Hell, we don’t even need my original straight male lead.

Yeah, that’s not happening. If you want to read that other book, somebody else will have to write it. I’m sticking to my story as originally conceived. My book would not have been chosen as is, not by a major publisher. And it wouldn’t be my fault. I have been vindicated.

Not that any of this makes me feel any better.

As for the writer in the video, he couldn’t make the changes either. The required changes would have gutted it and destroyed his whole intent. It would have been an entirely different book. It wouldn’t have been his anymore. In the end, he walked away, and so did his agent. At the end of the video we’re told the agent left the industry. She couldn’t sell books any more. Not original books by original writers. Not unless the writers were good at churning out generic box-checking diversity books because that’s all publishers want right now. I’m not sure if it’s what the readers want. If I knew what the readers wanted, I’d be writing that.

Because that’s the only way this climate is going to change. Somebody’s going to publish something that’ll become the Next Big Thing, and all the other publishers will scramble to become the first to be second. The books they’re publishing today will be sitting on Barnes and Noble’s discount shelves, or languishing, barely touched, at library used-book sales.

I hope that writer in the video writes that book. I’d rather it be me, but—well, go back and read the update. Or maybe I can fix that. Who knows? I’ve got the rest of the year to get my act together. See y’all next week.

 

 

Week 26 - (no subject)

 

Update – Not really much to talk about this go-round, either here or in the actual blog portion. I’m all caught up on the paid work and have off until Monday (July 8). I fell off on the actual writing again while I dealt with the paid stuff but will get back to typing tomorrow. I took Sunday off and spent the afternoon at my local comic book store, hanging out and keeping the clerk company (he’s an old acquaintance). We had a blast chatting with the customers about upcoming movies and classic trivia. For the record, my favorite Batman is Kevin Conroy, who provided the Caped Crusader’s voice on Batman: The Animated Series, which I mentioned last week. After Conroy passed, Mark Hamill announced he was retiring as the voice of the Joker because it wouldn’t be the same without his longtime castmate. So ends an era. My favorite Bruce Wayne—not Batman—is Ben Affleck. He’s got those classic chiseled features artists have been using for Wayne for decades. I mean, c’mon—did anybody really accept Michael Keaton as millionaire playboy Bruce Wayne? But once he put the costume on—dayum. Keaton was the best part of the recent Flash movie. I’m still imprinted on Christopher Reeve as Clark Kent/Superman, but I accept Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman. She looks like a woman who could beat the snot out of Supes. Female actors weren’t really allowed to be buff back when Lynda Carter had the role.

I made up a list of possible projects I can work on while I type/rewrite the detective story. So of course one not on the list is what decided to nudge me. I’ve found my loose scenes and I’m going to read over them and see if anything sparks. If not, I’ve got plenty of others to fiddle around with. Somehow, someway, something is going to get written by the end of July.

$$$$

I haven’t been reading much lately. Frankly, not for months. My paid job makes it harder, since all I do for that is read. Then I get to the end of the day and the last thing I want to do is stare at even more words. Add in depression and the game addiction and reading for fun kind of fell by the wayside. No wonder I haven’t been able to write. One of the best motivators/idea generators a writer can have is to read a truly horrendous, boring, badly-written book, the type that begs you to throw it across the room. (I recommend you only do this with printed books. Kindles cost money.) Now that I’m working on staying positive and rediscovering my joy in writing—and especially now that I have some time off between paid assignments—I’m going to find a good book and get back into the reading at bedtime habit. This should also help me sleep better at night. That and not eating sugary foods after 6 pm.

What to read? I’m currently reading a magazine interview with Neil Gaiman, which reminded me I’ve never read any of his Sandman work. Some comics fan I am. My local library has a massive graphic novel collection, so I should be able to rectify that easily. If not, I’ll see if any of  Robert Galbraith’s (J. K. Rowling’s pseudonym) Cormoran Strike books are available. I’ve read a couple of those and enjoyed them. Can’t solve the mystery, but I’ve gotten caught up in the not-quite-romance between Strike and his female partner. Or I can catch up on Stephen King’s books. I haven’t read any of his new ones since Covid closed down the library’s used bookstore. That, and King’s gotten boring since he sobered up. The  trouble with library books is that the trend these days is for longer works, 300-500 pages or more, and I’ve only got two weeks. If I decide to switch genres again and need to read current YA books, I’m going to be in deep guano.

If I do get writing something new—and I’d better, that credit card ain’t gonna pay off itself—I’m going to make a semi-change to the schedule and write the new book first thing in the morning, in longhand. That eliminates internet distractions, plus I’m more likely to get up from a notebook to eat than I am from the laptop. My ideal schedule would be to write my stuff in the morning, work on paid stuff in the afternoon, then wind down in the evening and watch TV. Or, better yet, read. Somehow yard work fell off the map. Yeah well. Do that on weekends.

I haven’t had a road trip in a while either. I’ve been too busy and it’s been too damn hot. I’m going to hold off on long trips until later this month, after the car’s inspected and gets a scheduled oil change. Less chance it’ll leave me stranded somewhere miles from home. I may need to wait for September for research trips to Philly. Not as much daylight, but much less humidity. I’m not worried about researching Strasburg, my book’s secondary setting. Strasburg’s about a twenty-minute drive from where I live. I can cruise around there on a Sunday afternoon and get all the info I need.

That’s about all I’ve got in the tank for this week. Enjoy your Fourth of July holiday, try not to blow off any fingers or toes with those illegal fireworks, and I’ll see y’all next week.