I began writing as a newspaper reporter and loved it enough to return to college for an appropriate bachelor's degree. Then the divorce left me responsible for my very young child. It didn't take long to realize that journalism's long hours and short pay didn't measure up to the Mom Responsibility.
With the discovery of a previously unknown knack for technology, the capability to hold a steady 9-to-5, and a certificate in Tech Writing from Durham Tech, I supported the two of us for many years. I found tech writing to be very much like reporting, using the same interviewing and writing skills to translate geek speak to ordinary, easy-to-follow English.
My last full-time tech writing job lasted nearly two years and grossed roughly $50 thou a year. It practically drove me into a mental breakdown, what with an hour-long commute bracketing the strain of working with an all-PhD staff, most of them specializing in math that I could never in a million billion years understand. Even so, I could have hung with it longer, but during the last several months of that job I had the dubious pleasure of dealing with my employer's sister as a co-equal writer, in spite of her exactly zero years' worth of experience (but fifty years' worth of self esteem).... I try not to dwell on it.
So now, five years after the dot-com crash brought such irrationally exuberant foolishness to an end and tossing in the throes of a crazed economy with a shaky employment outlook, I come to the conclusion that a standard tech writing job is no longer a realistic goal for this Boomer.
I got into tech by explaining how to use software to ordinary people. As part of that, I've become expert-level proficient with content creation software such as word and image processing and publishing applications -- the brand really doesn't matter as the techniques among each of the various disciplines are pretty much the same. If you know one word processor or one vector-based illustration package, you easily can figure out the others.
Around here, most of the employers who once hired writers to produce manuals and online help and web content and such don't want writers any more. They want coders who also write. (Ever wonder why online help and manuals read as though English is not the writer's first language?)
I can manually code HTML, and I'm pretty good with light scripting, but I draw the line at learning yet more complex coding languages -- Java and PHP and C+ and the like.
I'm a writer, daggumit, and a content creator! My challenge is -- should be -- understanding the differences of the various media in which content delivery takes place and writing to take advantage of the strengths of each medium while minimizing the inherent weaknesses. (Web publication is quite different from paper publication, for example, and a user manual is quite different from a "getting started" brochure.)
There seems to be little call for such.
So I have to change that career path yet again.
But, to what?
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3 comments:
Do what I do. Write novels, self-publish them, promote them, and sell them on the internet and elsewhere. Or better yet, have other people do most of the promotion and selling for you since you and they are ideologically simpatico and they are willing to do it for nothing because they like your work, while you handle the creative end.
The upside of this is that you can actually make a living at doing something creative instead of shuffling insurance papers or stacking pallets in a warehouse, or in your case going mad in a Dilbertesque cubicle. If it is your dharma to work behind a desk with your mind in a society which is determined never to allow you anywhere near the fulfillment of your potential, this does an end run around the asshole factor quite nicely.
You can also work at four o'clock in the morning in your underwear, if you so choose.
You can have the pleasure of sitting down and writing WHAT YOU WANT TO WRITE without fear of censorship or being forced to pass a political litmus test, although if you want to be successful you should of course keep one eye on the marketability factor.
(This is why I've included commercial dirt in some of mine. I personally don't see why anyone wants to READ in graphic detail about a sexual encounter, but it does float some people's boats and I do want readers to recommend the books to others.)
The downside is definitely there. First off, this is not Stephen King level stuff. You're not getting paid $50,000 per pound of manuscript, like King has been in the past. Unless you're very lucky or you work your carcass to the bone on the Net and in other promotional efforts, you're not going to make $50,000 a year. Okay, you MIGHT break big if you've got a couple of really good books.
It can happen. But it probably won't. I make about $20,000 a year on my books, which is adequate for me since I have no family to support thanks to...well, we won't get into who it's thanks to. If you really worked at it, wrote two or three magnum opi aimed at specific markets among the shrinking sectors who are both literate and possess a little disposable income, and then spent the next ten years promoting the hell out of them, you might do well, or at least adequately. And it's FUN, very easy on the blood pressure and stress levels if you take the right attitude.
Do not expect to be treated as a "real" author by the literary world itself. The multinational corporate publishing industry out of New York hates and loathes self-publishing like a polecat, because this new technology has broken their monopoly on the printed literary word and their moral authority over the literary art form. With VERY rare exceptions, you will not be able to make the leap from self-published author to Establishment-approved author. You could be the next Hemingway and your novel could be the Grapes of Wrath of 2005, and if you even whisper the words "self-publish" or "print to order" you will be blacklisted and your book will never see the light of day. No paranoia, ma'am, just life out here in the real world.
And of course, you've always got to deal with morally denatured morons who refer to your books as "vanities" because they have not been vetted by the Establishment Sanhedrin at the major houses and received their Official and Sanctified Imprimatur that you are indeed an author. Ignore these idiots. A novel is a novel and it will stand and fall on its own merits no matter who initially publishes it. Unrewarded literary genius is proverbial.
Frankly, I find you don't need the publishing establishment. The satisfaction of seeing your book professionally printed and bound and holding it in your hand is quite equal to anything any Establishment publisher could come up with.
Anyway, should want to check this idea out further, visit
http://www.iuniverse.com
and/or
http://www.authorhouse.com
among others. Okay, granted, this won't put any immediate shekels in your purse. But it's definitely a thought for the long term.
WOW! Now THAT'S a COMMENT! The most inspirational, no holds barred, go-for-it kind of thing I've heard in a while - cool. So, B, what do you think? Whatever happpened to, say, Pinto Pegasus? And I remember something about creatures living near a wall.... *grin*
[John Wayne imitation] "Waaal, thank yuh, ma'am."
Seriously, writing is something you do, and it doesn't matter whether you're Charles Dickens or Hunter Thompson or Jack the Shnook. One does not require or ask the permission of the politically correct, or of the big multinational corporations. One simply writes. One may be a great writer, a good writer, a bad writer, or a gonzo writer, or whatever, but that is a variable designation and it comes from those who READ your material, not those who try to control the flow of ideas and the shape of literature by getting a stranglehold on the means of production and distribution.
Anyway, enough. Dawn is approaching, and I feel my powers diminishing.
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