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place.
3. Set up a checking account and a savings account for yourself. Figure out how
much you have to have per month to get by. Pay yourself weekly or monthly from
your savings account into your checking account, and at all other times pretend the
money in the savings account isn't there. Otherwise, when you see that you have
$15,000 dollars in the bank, you will forget that that is your paycheck for six months,
and you will go out and do stupid things with the money, and then you won't have six
months of paychecks in the bank. Things won't be too bad in January, but along about
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May and June, when you're living on spaghetti with tomato sauce breakfast, lunch
and supper because it's all you can afford, you'll regret the new TV and the
Playstation and the motorbike.
4. Kill the bills before you quit. If you have debts, do whatever you have to do to get
rid of them. Pay off all credit cards (and get rid of all but one). Look for places where
your bank account bleeds, and stop the leaks. Don't buy a new car, don't buy a new
house, don't take out a second mortgage on the one you have, get yourself as close to
no outlay as you possibly can. Get used to paying by cash or check for things instead
of by credit card, and if you can't afford to pay by check, get used to doing without.
Don't use the card you keep. Ever. The only reason you have it is so that if you're
seven hundred miles from home and your car breaks down and no one at home can
wire you money and without it you'll have to panhandle your way home, you won't
have to panhandle your way home. If you do have to use it, pay it off immediately 
don't let the balance run.
5. Get some sort of health insurance. Writing does not come with it. Writing has
benefits, but they tend to be of the intangible sort. Try to find affordable health
insurance that has a reasonable deductible, that will let you go to whatever doctor you
want, and that doesn't exclude everything you might ever possibly have from its list
of covered items. My insurance is with International Benefit Services Corporation.
They're pretty good.
6. Have your next year or two of work lined up before you quit.
Which takes us to ...
" Having the Contracts to Quit On
If this sounds ominously like I'm saying you have to sell a book before you quit, that's
because I am. Don't quit the day job because you got a killer idea for a series, or
because you're sick of work and you think writing would be more fun (it would  but
that's not the point) or because you've finished your first book and your friends all
love it. For that matter, don't quit the day the editor calls you and tells you that she
wants to buy your first book. Don't quit the day you sign the first contract, or the day
you receive your first advance. The best book I ve read on being a professional
writer, The Career Novelist, by agent Donald Maass, has an article describing when
you should consider quitting your day job. Buy the book and read that for an in-depth
analysis of when you're ready. In brief, though, and from my experience, you're safe
to quit when:
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1. You're making as much money at writing as you are at the day job.
2. You've made that much money for at least a couple of years, and it isn't all in
advances on books that you haven't written yet and won't be able to get to for a
while. Most if not all of it should be in royalties, although mine isn't. This fact
makes my life a lot hairier than it would be otherwise, but I can't tell you that
you can't live off of advances. I can only tell you that you shouldn't.
3. You're getting royalties on at least some of your titles, and at least some of your
books are being reprinted.
4. Your agent gets you a deal that will cover your finances for several years and
guarantee your work for several books (if you follow the money rules above
and don't get crazy).
When you reach that point, it's time for the next big obstacle. Telling your family.
" Dealing With Your Family
Families come in all kinds, but no matter what kind yours happens to be, they are
probably going to think that quitting a nice, stable job to go haring off into the woolly
world of full-time writing is a dumbass thing to do. And from the point of view of
nice sane people everywhere, they are probably right. If you were one of the nice sane
people everywhere, though, you wouldn't even have made it this far in the article, so I
feel safe in addressing you, the wild and woolly fellow writer. Here are the rules
when dealing with family.
1. Do not expect them to understand.
They won't. They will not get what you are doing until and unless you are as
successful as Stephen King or John Grisham, and I'll bet even those two writers
occasionally get calls from their mothers asking when they're going to get real jobs.
You can hope your husband or wife (if you're married) will understand, but don't bet
the farm on it. The spouse will perhaps be laid back about it all while there's a fair
amount of cash in the bank and you're at the keyboard every day, (though he or she is
likely to complain about feeling neglected) but when things get hairy, expect cold
looks and newspapers at the breakfast table open to the Help Wanted section. If you
know money's coming, stand firm. If you aren't currently writing (because of a block
or whatever) and there aren't any pending contracts and things are hard, get a job that
will bring in money without killing your desire to write, and pitch in. (Blue-collar
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work is better than a career-type job if you don't want to watch your dream die
forever. You get another career-type job and try to walk away from it and your
marriage will not be happy, and your family will side with your spouse.) Write on the
side the way you did before.
2. Do not expect emotional support.
When things get rough, the response you can count on getting is not 'hang in, you'll
make it, I believe in you,' but 'I told you so before you quit your job. Maybe if you're
lucky they'll take you back.' Hang in anyway. You believe in you. You cannot expect
everyone else to see your dream; you can only hope they'll see the reality. Grit your
teeth and make it a reality.
3. Do not expect consideration.
You have a job, right? You're going to be sitting at a keyboard stretching your brain
for God knows how many hours. Your family (and friends) will keep this in mind,
right? Wrong. Your family and friends will figure as long as you're home all day, you
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