Well, okay, not entirely. I've got the jones bad enough that I can't keep away from it in one form or another, but the romance has largely gone out of it. It happens. You get older, your idealism fades, beaten down by harsh reality or grinding poverty, or both. I can't say I'm living in grinding poverty, or that my reality is particularly harsh, but I think something just snapped the other night, in the concatenation of several things: new job with deadlines that I can't leave at the office; lack of health insurace; new flare-up of the costochondritis that's become a chronic (but mostly manageable) condition; a difference of opinion with my business partner about the importance of deadlines; and Em mentioning one of her students wearing a shirt that said something like,
I've got no car.
I've got no house.
I've got no money.
I'm in a band.
Doesn't that just say it all if you're an unknown trying to do art in this country? If you don't spend half of your time scrambling around for grant money, you're too broke to do it, unless you're a poor scribbler like me. Even then, it's getting harder and less acceptable to send in a typewritten (as opposed to computer printed) manuscript, and that cuts you off from e-mail and web submissions, and listings of many markets.
What's this got to do with the other stuff that I listed? Start with the unmet deadline.
There's a con this weekend and we'd planned some zines for it because that's how we're generating cash right now for Long Meg. We do them cheaply by buying the paper and doing the copying and binding at work ourselves, rather than the usual way of dropping them off at a printer. Usually I get the production guy at work to order paper because he gets a discount, but we couldn't do that this time because we didn't have a final page count by the time the production deadline rolled around. Since we're working with other writers (usually it's just me, or the two of us), that's almost to be expected. Not that big a deal. But it wasn't only the other writers who missed the deadline (I build a lot of fudge time into my deadlines for that reason—2 months in this case, zines being what they are, i.e., unpaid). My partner did too, in a major way, so much so that to make the con, half the layout was done in paste up and the master was dropped off at a printer to be done overnight. There, needless to say, goes a big chunk of our potential "profits."
I put "profits" in quotations because nobody's making money on this. None of us get paid for the time we put into the zines, either writing or production or selling. In that sense, we're losing money because it's all volunteer and God knows I could be doing other things to make money in that time. What we're really generating is cash flow. It's cash flow that's bought all of our equipment, and much of our supplies. At the moment, it's all that's keeping Long Meg afloat.
Even this missed deadline probably wouldn't have been such a huge problem if I'd been healthy. Last-minute crises always happen in production. But for the last two weeks I've been largely flattened by another costo flare-up. Fortunately, I've been able to do a lot of work from home, where I can lie in bed and write on a clipboard for long stretches of time, if necessary. But that means I can't spend hours at the computer setting text either. I never know when this kind of thing is going to happen anymore, so I'm learning to plan ahead and do everything possible to give myself enough time to do things well, knowing that at some point there will be excrement hitting rotating ventilation blades. My partner, however, is still the kind (and I used to be like this) who thrives on the last-minute tarantella of terror, who believes there is no such thing as a drop-dead even if you drop dead. I wish I could still do that, but I don't have the stamina any more.
Add to this the fact that I'm a freelancer with no health insurance, which means work must come first, so that's where what energy I have goes, so I can afford to pay the doctor out of my own pocket, if necessary. Because healthcare insurance, if you're not under the corporate umbrella, is hard to get and very expensive. And why am I a freelancer with no health insurance? So I can do art.
So I have the time to write and make books. This is the trade-off, when you don't have grant money. You have to buy the time by doing shitty, or part-time, or weird, off-hours jobs because working 9-5 (does anybody work 9-5 now? Even bankers don't, anymore) leaves most people with only enough umph and creative juice to go home and slump in front of the TV.
A lot of people are under the misconception that this is somehow romantic. Hell, I was under the misconception that it was somehow romantic, for a long time. I'm not saying it doesn't have its compensations; it does. I much prefer working for myself, making my own hours, doing what I want to do more or less when I want to do it. That's more important to me than job security and a big bank account (both of which my friend Jen, bless her heart, has managed to acquire along with a great condo, doing freelance science writing). So is doing the art, even knowing it may never take off.
But there's nothing remotely romantic about it, and the older I get, the less romantic it seems. I'm not complaining, because I like my life, and I'm not going to whine about the great sacrifices I'm making, because I'm not sacrificing that much. But here's the facts: I live in a totally unfashionable part of town with a lot of gang violence (I'm lucky that I live on a safe street very close to the subway and don't go out in my neighborhood) and no amenties (crappy grocery store, lousy restaurants, no decent bars, no cafes, no takeout that's not greasy Chinese or pizza, no decent greengrocer); I live in a run-down apartment that purports to be a 1 bedroom, and is in reality a 2-room studio, with a huge bath and a walk-in closet; I gross between $30-$40,000 a year, depending on clients; if I'm having a good year, I buy health insurance; I have no car; I have no condo; I have no boyfriend; etc. Them's the facts. And that's the life I've chosen. "Moulin Rouge" it ain't.
But there's the art, the writing, the making books, the process. Yep, there's all that. That's the payoff. It's a great payoff. But it's got to work. When it ceases to be fun, then all I'm doing is living a miserable, marginal existence. Then I'll have to just get a job.
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