Susan's Scribblings the Blog

The writers have reached an agreement with the entertainment industry, thank goodness.  I genuinely feel for those folks who try to make a living by wordcrafting.  It’s not like the less-shaky ground of working in an office, where you have a place to go and a cubicle to sit in, and your presence is usually sufficient to guarantee you a paycheck as long as you’re productive and don’t commit any professional indiscretions.  I’ve written gratis for years, probably because I have a fear of getting paid for writing and suddenly finding myself in an unknown income bracket, with tax collectors breathing down my neck or stalkers waiting around the corner ready to poke a quill in my ear (hey, I saw Misery too, you know).

Not that I haven’t gotten recognition for my writing from various small venues over the years.  They just don’t have awards shows and red carpets for “little” writers.  I did get a fan appreciation award once for contributing to a newsletter with regular articles about current events.  Once, a celebrity even took the time to respond to an article I’d written, which was one of my top ten emotional highs of all time.  I didn’t feel I needed a paycheck for those moments.

Writing for a living must be mentally trying.  Days and months of effort can result in no pay at all, a promise of publication can go south if market conditions change, and only a handful of novelists get to be as big as Stephen King (and the peak of that roller coaster ride has just as precipitous a drop on the other side).

Sure, when a writer produces a work, they should be paid for it if that is what they are doing as a profession:  it doesn’t matter if the work appears on a flatscreen television, the Internet or a Dick Tracy wristwatch.  Musical artists are having similar problems with compensation (which is why I still shop carefully and stick with tangible media like CDs for my fave artists).

Now that the writers are back, I’m looking forward to some quality stuff to come out.  It will take time, though, because they don’t just sit in cubicles thinking up professional indiscretions to commit, you know.