Freelance

Around the time that I first met my wife — this would have been 1990 or so — I made a change in my occupation and  began calling myself a writer. Now, I didn’t say I was a writer, or that I was writing much or had even been published.  That’s not the point. I just started calling myself one — see, how it works is that first you call yourself a writer, then you become one.

And what do would-be writers call themselves if they have little to no publishing credits? That’s easy. We are freelance writers. So, that’s what I was. A freelance writer.

In fact, if you look at our wedding announcement you will see listed under occupation, both a purchasing agent and a freelance writer — see, it was okay to be a purchasing agent, as long as your were a writer too.

Now, if I were to research this, it may have been possible that I had a small piece published by then, but I doubt it and it didn’t matter. The title was what was important. Which is the great thing about being a freelance writer; you didn’t  have to be published or even have written anything. And because people were somewhat confused by the freelance heading back then, they pretty much left it alone after that.

Calling myself a writer was also a convenient safety chute, or back door. If my real life failures were ever brought up, I just pulled the writer thing out. Yeah, well, I’m also a freelance writer. Meaning, yeah, I may look like a loser now, but some day you may be bragging that you met me once. Other variations of this include; yeah, well I’m also a musician, and, yeah, well I’m also an actor. And when you’re young, these back doors actually work.

So Debbie and I got married and I continued being a writer. I had a few bad articles published in a few bad independent newspapers — that pretty much accepted anything — and now I crowned myself, published freelance writer. Then, when Debbie was pregnant with our first son, I pimped a copy of his ultra sound for my very first paid writing gig. A short article in The Weekly World News — a highly respected periodical of the day known for in depth studies of both bigfoot and aliens — entitled, I’m having Elvis’ baby; because at that early stage of Nick’s development, his head had that Elvis pompadour thing. I was paid fifty dollars and a batboy t-shirt. And now, I had moved to the level of professional freelance writer.

I started sending query letters out to magazines and publishers by the truck load and this probably explains while I still have this weird thing about the mail. Even in the day of texting and email there is a solid Pavlovian reaction to the sound of the mailbox being opened — I have to get the mail, this might be good news.

I managed to get a few pieces published in a few magazines and then, on the very same day that we were closing on our first house, I heard back from a small publisher. They liked a book idea I had pitched and wanted to publish it.

I had made it.

Now, the book was a non-fiction look at the first year of marriage — at all the changes and challenges that existed. And although I didn’t want to write non-fiction — no one wants to write non-fiction —  it’s widely known that once you get a non-fiction book published, agents and publishers beat a path to your door in order to get to your good stuff.

The book was badly written and badly edited and I didn’t care. I was about to be a published book author which would put me on the correct path. I went on a small book tour, did the CNN, Fox News, thing along with a bunch of book signings. And because the book was the only one of its kind back then — there are dozens now — I convinced the publisher into letting me write another one. This time on the first year of fatherhood.

Book two was the same. Rinse and repeat. And then everything stopped. The world didn’t beat a path to get to me. The publisher wasn’t interested in more of my dumb ideas and I was — confused.

The books — that were supposed to fix everything, to justify my existence and erase my many failures  — did not. And I actually felt worse than I did before I was published.

Now, we enter my angry phase. I mentioned the books on my resume — as a way to catch an interviewer’s eye — but otherwise I didn’t talk about them at all. If the topic were brought up in casual conversation, I changed the subject — the same way you do when asked if you beat that DWI charge or how the bankruptcy is going.

I did very little writing during this time but ironically did land the highest paid writing job I had, or would ever have. This was the beginning of the end of the dot-com bubble and finding content providers was still difficult to do; which meant that they were actually pretty highly paid. There was a website being developed called Decisionagent.com that paid me three hundred bucks for every 700 word article I could write for them. I pumped out three of these a day, every day, for six weeks before the bubble popped and they went belly up.

Now there’s more to my glorious writing career. I got to spend the last six years working with a great group of people writing and helping direct Christmas plays, I have a book coming out next week and of course there is this website. But here is the point to all of this.

I no longer think of myself as a writer. I don’t. And a large reason for this is that I’ve learned that I really don’t like writers all that much. I’m sorry if this offends, but writers — for the most part, there are exceptions — are largely self important, arrogant, self involved people, usually with a 70/30 mix of ego over talent. They’re not much fun to hang out with and you really don’t want to aspire to be like them.

So I’m no longer a writer — freelance or otherwise.

Now, I just write.

The history of bat boy — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_Boy_(character)