The Writer's Dilemma

Do you admit that you’re a writer? If it’s in your job description I suppose you do, but for many of us being a writer presents us with a dilemma. Do you admit to your boss that you’re hoping to get paid for what you do off the clock?

I have a friend in the publishing industry whose employer has strict rules about such things. Any “employment” that takes away from work time has to be declared in written form and sent to the office that investigates conflict of interest. If you’re a writer who’s paid to do something else you can already see where I’m going with this.

Inspiration doesn’t obey time-clocks. In fact, it almost always makes a mockery of them. When you’ve arrived at work and punched in (i.e., booted up your PC) does that story idea obediently bed down until 5 p.m.? Of course not. Even after you’ve dug into today’s business, it’s probably playing like muzak in the back corridors of your gray matter. It sometimes can’t wait until the lunch break to burst out.

What boss would be glad to hear that? Doesn’t it sound like a recipe for unproductive employees and incipient laziness? Boss’ll say “make bricks without straw,” and you’ll be basking in that metaphor. But those of us who write have a secret. We know that simple binaries aren’t half the story. We can do more than one task at a time.

Still, it’s dangerous to admit to the boss that you write. More often than not, the thought will be there that you could be using some of that “fluff time” for working a few extra hours. Make more money for the company. Take one for the team. That’s the way a non-writer thinks.

The writer has the dilemma: to say or not to say? We also have a bit of insider knowledge. Taking that few minutes offline during the course of the work day doesn’t hurt our performance. As writers know, it only enhances it.

Comments

Dusty

My, this thing is dusty. My fans—hi, Mom!—perhaps believe me to have perished in the pandemic. No, it was nonfiction’s fault. Since the pandemic began I’ve had two nonfiction books published and have written a third. With a nine-to-five job something’s got to give. Unfortunately it’s been fiction. Well, the groundhog didn’t see his shadow yesterday, so it must be safe to come out. I shuffled away the rejection notes and began submitting again. I’ve got a backlog of weird stories and maybe some new publishers have emerged? The thing is, don’t you just hate it when you’re in the mood to submit and some lit journal has its window for submissions firmly shut? My last story, “ The Hput, ” was published about three years ago. Oh, I’ve submitted since then, but with no traction. Well, it is winter. I’ve got a lot of stories lined up. I’ve been sending them out again, dreaming of making a dime at what I love doing best. When you’ve been writing for half a century, you l

The Same Old Story

After a story is rejected from a literary magazine—a rather frequent occurrence—I always revise it. For stories rejected half a dozen or more times—a rather frequent occurrence—the stories can shift substantially. In a version of the old saw that “this is the axe used by George Washington to chop down the cherry tree; it has had five new handles and three new heads,” I wonder if the story is the same after such revision. I write in the flush of inspiration. The story comes to me roughly complete. The literati say “no,” and I assume the fault must be my own. I knuckle down and start trying to revise to their liking. The action changes. The ending changes. The characters change. Is it the same story? Is the fault that my addled brain seems to have trouble telling a story someone wants to read? Is it the curse of an internet that makes writers of anyone with fingers to type? I started writing fiction four decades ago. If I’d tried to start publishing then, perhap

Neglectful Parents

If I was a parent I’d be accused of neglect. I have to say 2017 was the least published year of recent memory. Not that I’ve been neglecting my fiction, but I had a non-fiction book accepted and I work full-time and commute to that job—you get the picture. I’ve also had a personal epiphany. If you can write, you should get paid for it. I know a publicist (not my own; I don’t have one) and she says she won’t let her authors even write an op-ed if they don’t get paid. I guess I’d never get published then. My Medusa novel had a flicker of hope for a few moments. A publisher actually wrote back asking for the rest of the manuscript. That’s never happened before. Then the editor disappeared. Even called me by the wrong pseudonym. I’ve gotta wonder about that because the second half of the novel’s even better than the first. While looking for an agent for my non-fiction (couldn’t find one of those either) I came across several who said they liked quirky ficti

K. Marvin Bruce

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