Many writers, myself included, subsist on alternate vocational income while writing aspirations slowly take flight. Because even a respectable platform still renders one far from established author privies—Namely, tallying up royalty checks while nursing writer’s block with umbrella’d drinks (or good rye) at tropical locales (or at least Coronado).
Few writers ever access such a lifestyle. And non-writing, normal work-week folks don’t seem to get that writers may actually work more than non-writers, not less. I’ve laughed off many comments from 9-5ers, who assume that once you’ve penned a decent novel that you’re home free. Someone even asked if I "sit at home doing nothing all day now". She works for the government.
Yesterday, I happened upon an article by Daniel Dalton, a staff writer at Buzzfeed, solidifying those very same generalizations–that being a writer equals conveniently low productivity and a loose definition of "work". I was irritated and so spent two hours in a caffeine-fueled attempt to refute the article (see link below).
But the fact is, the more I tried to argue with his tongue-in-cheek funnies, the more I found them to be amusing and even somewhat relatable. So, my rebuttal was essentially a waste of two hours.
Read Dalton’s full article for yourself, a list of 29 words that mean something totally different when you’re a writer to see if he’s got your number. I found #23 "Editing" to be the most spot on. It seems that wasting time on garbage writing is a common offense among word-slingers.
But thanks to Dalton, I can now call that work.
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