I’ve reached the conclusion that writers are insane. We really are.
Think of it this way, we are job hunting from the moment we first decide to put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard. We job hunt with an 80,000 (+/-) resume that we spend months putting together, editing, re-editing, and re-re-editing. We send that huge honkin’ resume to one job opening at a time. Not to a bunch at a time, but to one. And we wait. And wait. Not two weeks, not four weeks. But often 6 months (+/-). When we are turned down, we send it out to another job opening. But did we learn our lesson the first time? Nooooo. We send it to just one.
Some writers send the huge honkin’ resume to a head hunter. With those, for some reason, we send to several at once. We keep little spreadsheets and/or databases of who has the resume when.
To further prove that writers are insane, we often have more than one resume going. And yes, it can be as large as the other.
We spend a lot of time and effort (and eat a lot of chocolate) while we job hunt. One good part of this adventure is that moonlighting with the job we are pursuing is not only perfectly acceptable, it is the norm. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs actually demands we moonlight. (How else do we afford our chocolate?)
Then there are those writers who are not too insane. There are those who write for their own pleasure, a form of catharsis. The concept of getting a job doing this is gravy on their potatoes for what they are already doing: writing.
Does pursuing publication take away the pleasure of writing? Does the reality of it take away the joy of it?
Lorna wanted to run her own campground. For several years, she researched, attended classes and workshops on how to run a campground. But the more she found out about it, the less appealing it was. It was work! Running a campground is a far cry from vacationing in one. She would have been so busy running it, she wouldn’t have been able to enjoy it.
Does writing with the goal of publication steal that joy? Do deadlines and contracts kill the fun?