I have a friend who I see in coffee shops. He works above the coffee shop in a small ramshackle office. When I am done writing I go to the coffee house to read and research. Writing is a process of filling up and emptying out. It is very accordion that way. I fill up in the afternoons after the attic and let it all fly the next day and start over. When I see my friend who used to be an architect and still is an architect but got wiped out in the crash, he always says, don't you have a family? Why don't you get a job? He says this with a smile and we both laugh, but I know he means it.
Middle class people have always defined an office as a job. They have always defined working set hours as a job. Writers have neither of these although I have both but not in the way most people have them. People don't understand jobs that don't have a shingle or don't have a haggard eight hour repetition cycle built in. My friend has neither of these but he wants both but prefers his office above the coffee house to not having an office. He likes to think I don't have a job and in that middle class way it makes him feel better about himself. All rats chomp on each other.
So I guess I have to say writing is a job. A very serious and hard one. And if you get paid for it it is even harder because you cannot cheat. You have to write at your very top and that is exhausting. At times I think an office job wouldn't be bad. Just go and sit at a desk like my friend and wait for the checks to roll in. But of course then I wouldn't be a writer. I'd be a man with a desk who could say to other people: why don't you get a job? That would be fun for about a day.
http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man will blast off April 26th
Middle class people have always defined an office as a job. They have always defined working set hours as a job. Writers have neither of these although I have both but not in the way most people have them. People don't understand jobs that don't have a shingle or don't have a haggard eight hour repetition cycle built in. My friend has neither of these but he wants both but prefers his office above the coffee house to not having an office. He likes to think I don't have a job and in that middle class way it makes him feel better about himself. All rats chomp on each other.
So I guess I have to say writing is a job. A very serious and hard one. And if you get paid for it it is even harder because you cannot cheat. You have to write at your very top and that is exhausting. At times I think an office job wouldn't be bad. Just go and sit at a desk like my friend and wait for the checks to roll in. But of course then I wouldn't be a writer. I'd be a man with a desk who could say to other people: why don't you get a job? That would be fun for about a day.
http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man will blast off April 26th
