The Joy of Text

I've been spending quite a bit of time lately on graphic panels - those flat boards with words on that explain what a museum exhibit actually is. And, do you know, it's a pleasure. 


Because, when you're writing plain text, there's just you and your ability to string a sentence together. You don't have to write for characters, you don't have to set it to music or make it run to 30 seconds. You just have to make it clear, concise and understandable to a bright 11-year-old. Which, since I happen to have a bright 11-year-old to hand, isn't that hard.


It's rather like writing history essays at school; there's you, your vocabulary and a big pile of facts to communicate. You have to structure it and make it clean and clear... and that's it.


If only everything were that simple. Mind you, if everything were that simple, I'd be out of a job...

Good things come to those who wait

In case you cared, one of my three debtors has coughed up, one has processed the paperwork so I'll get paid next week, and the other is getting things sorted.


I smile benignly on the human race...until the next time.

Doin' it for the money

Now, I’m not one of those who claims that writing is every bit as exhausting as road-mending or coal-mining, or as nerve-wracking as surgery. There’s no comparison. But it is work, frequently challenging if not difficult, and you have to care about what you’re doing. That’s just basic professionalism.

Every so often, though, I meet friends doing similarly non-manual jobs who equate not wearing a suit with not really working. And I think this attitude also prevails among some clients.

“You creative types!” they laugh – or at least they do once I’ve exaggerated them for comic effect. “Why, you rise at noon, chew your quill, stare out of the window at the daffodils and let your minds fly free with the wild birds! Surely such a life is its own reward, untramelled by care for material things!”

To which I reply, “Dear Sir, following my reminder of the 5^th inst., my invoice number 201 remains unpaid. If this remains the case…”

Here’s the thing, though; as a group, we writers don’t help ourselves.

I can’t put my finger on the exact quote – the book’s in the loft - but Stephen King said something along the lines of, if you’re only writing for the money, don’t be a writer. Well, fair play to him. He wrote when he had nothing, and still writes now he’s got plenty.

But too many of us miss the word “only” out of that sentence of his. There’s a feeling among the poetry groups and writing circles that (a) they could do what we do but (b) they don't because it would be prostituting their art.

Can we please ditch this 19^th-Century consumptive-poet crap and get back to something more intellectually honest? How about the 18^th century Grub Street hack, James Ralph, who said…

“[The author] is laugh'd at if poor; if to avoid that curse, he endeavours to turn his Wit to Profit, he is branded as a Mercenary.”

Testify, Brother James, testify. Yes, we are prostituting our art. But art it is, and we create it to a high enough standard to get paid for it - we take a pride in doing so. 

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a street to walk.

American Gothic Revisited

Manly Wellman sounds like a pseudonym. He was actually a writer of – what? Modern American folktales or fairytales, I suppose – little slices of American Gothic, the best known of which were set in the Appalachians and featured Silver John.

I was reminded of them by a very well-written role-playing game blog called Grognardia (if you ever played these things, I commend it to you).

I hadn’t read “The Desrick on Yandro” since I was 12 or so, but when I re-read it online it still made me grin and shiver in a ratio of about 3:1. If you’re 12, or liked being 12, give it a go; you can find it here along with the rest of the short stories. 

Well, I did say I was going to talk about my likes and dislikes. But I think it’s worth saying what’s so good about these stories from a writer’s point of view – and here it is…

They’re short. Seriously, they say what they have to say, take their bow and exit. Crisply written in a convincing (to me) Appalachian idiom, with real people drawn in a few bold strokes, they don’t suffer from novella bloat, that disease of the literary short story that makes it swell up and try to be a baby novel.

Someone should try and adapt these for TV or, maybe even better, radio. H’mmm…wonder what the rights are going for…?

Dead languages and deadlines

Weird job. I'd been tasked with finding a translator who could do some Latin dialogue for a museum soundscape up in Northumberland. The one I found was excellent but also had a teaching post to honour, so when the deadline got too tight I found myself dusting off 'O' Level Latin, hitting the online dictionaries and doing a few lines of translation myself.

Oddly, though, I found myself mentally recasting the characters after I'd done the translations. The gruff NCO whom I imagined demanding the presence of the carpenter in English became an arrogant junior officer when he did the same in Latin. Conversely, the patrician lady who wanted a new floor in English became a sort of upmarket Essex gangland wife in Latin.

What was wonderful was the way the Latin made sense again after all these years - so logical and rational without being mechanistic. That said, all my translations may turn out to be gibberish. I can hear the chalky ghosts of Latin teachers long departed muttering "...wouldn't be the first time, boy..."

And best of all - the producer can't possibly demand amends because he doesn't know any Latin!!!!


Bwahahahahaha....

The Money-Go-Round

Does anyone in this game ever get paid on time? This, I'm afraid, may get a little bit ranty - apologies in advance...

Right now, I've got three big invoices outstanding. One's for some voice work, one's with a production house, and one's with a design company I did some work for last year. Yes, last year.

The VO payment is late because "the account exec forgot to bill the client so we couldn't pay you last week and then only one person can issue artist payments and he's away so we can't pay you this week..." So that's two weeks overdue.

The production bods say they didn't get my invoice in the e-mail. Odd. The CC copy came through to me fine, I had their address right, they've had a statement and a reminder and not got in touch...but nothing happens until I actually ring up their accounts person. And that's three weeks overdue.

And the designers can't pay me until their client pays them, which doesn't happen until the copy is approved, which doesn't happen until the client has actually looked at the copy...which was delivered in December. Correction, was amended in December. It was delivered in August. So that's either three or six months overdue, depending on how charitable you feel - in my case, not even slightly.

And everybody does it. Everybody. Miss a copy deadline and you'd think you'd killed the family hamster. Round the invoice up by a penny instead of down by a pound and they sue. But if they happen to pay a writer a month late, even though their own salaries go into the bank like clockwork... Pffft, what's the fuss about?

And all these things and more I can't actually say to these clients because, well, because I need the work.

I'd say "I need the money" but what's the use?

Ah well... I've got some invoicing to do...

It begins...

Welcome!

I'm a writer. Not a would-be writer, an actual one, actually getting paid (late) for writing all kinds of things, from recruitment ads to museum audiovisuals to - oh please, let it happen again soon - TV scripts. I also do the occasional voice-over.

But I'm not touting for work.

Not here, anyway. I've got a real website with my real name on it for that.

You see, writing is the kind of job that ends up sending you to the therapist. You work with other highly unbalanced types like advertising execs and actors, and since insanity is catching.... Unfortunately, only Russell T. Davies and Stephen King can actually afford therapists on a writer's earnings.

So on this blog, I'm going to ramble on about my professional life, my likes and dislikes, the various loons I work with and for and, on bad days, why I wish I'd listened to my mother and been a lawyer instead. That way, I get to share and rant about my feelings, but blogspot.com gets to pay for it. Trust me, that's as close as most writers will ever get to seeing a BUPA shrink.

I shall try not to be self-indulgent. I shall try to avoid believing that my opinions actually matter. Above all, I shall try not to get sued for libel. This last I shall achieve by anonymising the heroes (yes, there are some) and villains of my professional life through the cunning use of sobriquets - so don't expect to see any names you, or your lawyer, will recognise.

I hope you enjoy reading it. I hope you comment on it. I hope you click on the ads and earn me shiny copper pennies. I'm a writer. I need 'em.

And so...onward!