An LOL Cat – and Your Friday From the Archive Post
see more Lolcats and funny pictures
I found this funny as I’m realizing I have new minions to write into the next ROTA, because of fan participation at ConDFW. And now, as I mentioned on Wednesday, on Fridays I was going to post my old StrangeWords posts here to archive them here.
—Writing as Work — September 2008
“Writing, it’s not like it’s work.” I had to keep from smacking a woman who should know better for saying something like this to me recently. My mental comeback was along the lines of, “Tell it to your dissertation.” I didn’t say it out loud. Maybe I should’ve.
All writers deal with people like this, and usually much closer to home than a random acquaintance. For those of us who’ve chosen writing or some other telecommuting occupation as a career, often times we fight an uphill battle for respect and boundaries. Since we’re not in an office or store, we’re not “working”. We’re available to run errands or take care of the house or any number of things that take away from “butt in chair” time required to actually accomplish our job.
It took my mother jumping into her writing to realize that she’d taken advantage of my time during my first bout of freelancing. One of my friends never quite got the memo. She would plan things for us to do and then extend the time by being late for no good reason or finding something else to do while we were out. These outings would correspond with her days off, but never considered that maybe I didn’t necessarily have days off.
That’s the kicker. That’s what most people don’t realize. That when you’re a writer and when you work from home, there is no such thing as a day off. You’re at work, working, or thinking about work almost 24/7. There’s no office door at which to leave your work. You find your boss is harder, more demanding, and more insistent because it’s you than any other outside boss. And there’s no one to complain about, blame, or rant on to your spouse or significant other. If something goes wrong, it’s all on you.