write on, a status report

A realization struck me yesterday: for the past year, for better or worse, in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, I supported myself with my writing. One complete year now, I’ve been a writer. I’m a bit stunned, actually.

To be skeletal honest, most of my paid writing isn’t the writing I’d like to be doing. I am not, for example, being paid to be a columnist, a job I’d dearly love. No great media giant like Condé Nast is doling out my happy yearly salary in great dripping gobs. I don’t get much groovy gratis stuff such as hot-and-cold-running tickets to rock shows (like my friend Sasha Frere-Jones) or tickets to plays (like my friend Terry Teachout) or cruises with 90’s bands and trips to Sasquatch seminars (like my friend Eric Spitznagel). I don’t have a book contract. I didn’t get my piece published in the Times, sadly. I don’t even have agents falling over themselves to court me, as I once did. But I do pay my bills by the fruits of my linguistic labors.

Most of what I write falls under the broadly defined rubric of “copy.” The term brings to mind packing excelsior: stuff that’s made to fill other stuff so that yet more stuff doesn’t rattle around and break from stress, entropy, or gravitational force. The copy I write sells things. It seems I’m fairly adept at writing stuff that sells things. I also ghostwrite, and it seems I’m fairly adept at ghostwriting, that practice that seems more ventriloquist than apparitional, for when you write as a ghost, you’re transmitting someone else’s voice through your body of work. I sometimes write for magazines, though not often and not the ones I want to write for. I had three sexytime stories published in three separate anthologieswriting for a sexytime website (which writing I actually do enjoy). But what I want to write for money mostly isn’t what I’m getting paid to write, not yet anyway. last year. I’m

I have hope. I have guidance. I have ideas. I have talent. And—enter the weirdness—I also apparently have diligence, devotion and discipline. It has been four years since I waywardly began my journey into this writing life, and though I’ve not quite stumbled onto my perfect path, I don’t veer off the trail, to run a metaphor into the dark, loamy ground. I doubt myself with soul-keening acuity, but I do so less frequently. This is a good sign. I also feel as if my writing is getting stronger, more structural; it’s losing its wisteria. Don’t get me wrong: I like wisteria; it’s pretty and it smells good. But wisteria in all its purple glory hides its roots that tear up foundations and leave buildings hollow rubble. It needs to be pruned. Prose is the same way.

I may not yet be paid to write what I want, and I may not yet be paid enough with the kind of consistency to keep me thoroughly solvent, but I am getting closer. Most importantly, none of it would be possible without this blog. This blog started me writing consistently. Having it made me write honestly, bravely and dangerously. I am not a person who can write without an audience. If there’s no one reading, I don’t want to write.

Like the generous support that makes the fine programming at PBS possible, my freelancing year was made possible by this blog, and by extension those people who read it. Because not only did my blog kick my writing ass, and not only did it provide me with my much loved and very necessary audience, but it also brought me almost every single opportunity I’ve had to write. With the exception of one magazine gig, the paid projects I’ve received have come to me through people who read my pretty dumb things: the copywriting, the ghostwriting, the Penthouse and other magazine pieces, the public relations copy, the erotic stories, the sexytime website—all of it.

One thing I’ve learned about blogging: you never know who is reading. It’s a risk to choose to write, but it’s deadening to choose not to. I’d rather be alive and reckless than inert and reckful.

All of which is to say thank you. I write as much because of you as because I must. I don’t know most of you, but you’ve made an indelible, positive mark on my life, like a collective big check in the plus column. I’ve only yet realized an imperfect version of my dream, but I’ve found some lurking eldritch confidence that I’m edging closer to what I want. Slowly, slowly, I’m getting there. Thank you for pushing me.