savvymavvy:

methlabrador:

when people say “i dont believe in science”

what are you even talking about

pugsandshrugs:

So why do you think you are suited to this position?

What are your achievements so far?

What are your ambitions. in reference previous education and work history?

The faces I make when people start poking holes in my plot and characterization.

Jelly asked:

Okay my parents are not supportive of my wanting to be a writer and have “encouraged” me to find an alternate career. Writing is the only thing I want to do, tho. What can I do to make them understand my dream is important to me?

You don’t, because you can’t. 

They either get it or they don’t. And right now, they don’t. 

Let that be OK. Trust me on this–it’s so much easier if it’s OK. 

My mother doesn’t get it, either. She has no clue what goes into the making of books. She doesn’t understand why it takes so long, why we writers have to jump through so many submission hoops, why we don’t insist to be paid an hourly wage while we’re writing the book, since, hey, we’re writing the book. We are doing the work. 

She basically thinks the whole publishing thing is just a huge scam. 

Like maybe the ghost of Ed McMahon will show up on your doorstep with a $10,000,000 check…but probably they’re just trying to sell you a bunch of magazines.

It’s funny, because when you’re a kid, and you say you want to do this outlandish thing, like write a book, people smile and cheer you on, because you’re a kid, a kid who’s probably playing make-believe, and even if you’re not playing make-believe, you’re still a kid, and eventually you’ll grow out of it.

But when you’re 22? 27? 32? 50? 

When you’re giving up a good job and cashing in your 401K to pursue this thing that makes, like, zero dollars?

Yeah.

But the thing is, they’re your folks. They care about you. They want you to choose a mind-numbingly safe career for the same reason they wanted you to chew enough times before swallowing or go to bed at a decent hour before a big test or not stick your hand on a hot stove. 

They want to know you’re being taken care of. 

Writing doesn’t offer that security. Probably it never will, even if you’re successful with it, even if you get published.

So even though I totally side with you–I do! I do!–I also side with your parents.

Because I was that girl who quit the big job and blew threw her retirement in pursuit of something that, to put it bluntly, happens when it happens. 

I also think that it’s important to have a life outside writing and publishing and agents and books. Writing can’t be all you have. There has to be something else there, too. Something you do for fun. Something you do for money. Something you do because, fuck knows, you just do it, I guess. 

Writing is fragile, and if you try to balance you entire existence on it, it will break. 

So balance your existence on something else instead. 

I’m not saying give up writing–heavens no. 

I’m saying…find a career you don’t mind all that much, that doesn’t use up your creative energy, but that pays a shit ton of money. Then do that thing for a while. 

Live a little. 

Write a lot. 

Pay your bills. 

Buy the fancy cheese and the good wine and eat until you are full. 

At least try to look at the prospect of doing something else for money as the thing that supports your writing as opposed to the thing that takes you away from it.