IWSG October 2020

 This was the first Wednesday of October, which meant that I definitely did not need the Insecure Writers Support Group Facebook page to remind me that it’s that day where we blog...

Nope! That’s definitely not what happened!

(In my defense, I skipped...many, many months of membership duties. I was dropped from the rolls an’ everything.)

Anyway, we have a question to answer, as always:

What does the term “working writer” mean to you?

I can only interpret it as a writer, such as myself, who has a job and writes in their spare time, so that being a writer is not the title they use for tax purposes.

And I have been doing that for many, many years.

At this point I actually have a job that feels like it’s a productive use of my time, that people see me as some benefit other than as an anonymous face. I mean I don’t need my ego involved, but it’s nice. It just feels less like a job, sometimes, this way.

But strangely, sometimes I wonder if actual job fulfillment could get in the way of being productive as a writer. I worked on a lot of things over the past year, including the “bonus pandemic time,” but I wonder if it’s comparable to what I might have accomplished if I were working a less satisfying job. I know, it sounds crazy! Not being overly miserable at work is a bad thing??? I wrote all of my manuscripts (except one, which was during my first experience of unemployment, and then others that weren’t book-length so I’m not counting them) while working versions of soul-crushing jobs. It almost felt necessary!

And yes, it still sounds crazy. Maybe that’s just what I told myself, and what I’m continuing to tell myself. Maybe this is continued fallout from giving myself a little time before truly breaking in the new computer (I plan to get some work done over the three-day weekend, I swear!), I don’t know. Maybe!

I’ve certainly written some interesting things in the two years I’ve been at this job. I’ve written extended comic book scripting projects for the first time ever, for instance. I even spun off one of them some original ideas (because both were based on existing DC or Marvel concepts), and maybe I could work on that next, if I felt like doing that again. And besides, I feel like I’m getting closer to writing new manuscripts. I plan to write a novella for the rewrite Christmas package for my niece (there’s only one element from the previous one I want to revisit, riffing on something she was singing while MASTERING RIDING A BIKE AT ABOUT FIVE YEARS OLD) (not that I’m bragging for her) (and to be clear, a two-wheel, no training wheels bicycle).

So that’s what “working writer” means to me. Complicated. But interesting.