Writing: Freelance Drivel

I worked as a freelance writer for years, and it was possibly the most draining thing I've ever done. I felt constantly raped of any talent I had; throwing away any ability on money to sustain myself with. I will not become a freelance writer again, and will continue trying to write and work towards publishing a novel or an anthology. I wrote this piece back when I was still doing it for a living; just short, commentary prose.

Writing


It's lonely; as a writer, you are a writer and nothing else. The real writer sacrifices everything, to be a writer. When you are with friends, you are thinking of what you would write, if you could; corrections, editing your last entry in some form or another, and always, always writing. It creeps into you and takes over, the possessive, obsessive need to put pen to paper, finger to key and drain your mind until it is a bleak, blank landscape. But if fills again, because there is always a need that must be addressed, always an idea, --whether it is yours or not.

As a professional writer, you do not write books, or articles that appear in books, magazines, or print. Instead, this generation of professionals, we write to sell, we strive to make ends meet by twisting our god given talent until it fits the perimeters of the ALMIGHTY CLIENT. And if your client or customer is not pleased, then you go back and fix it, or you're fired. So what was once sweet release, is now a torturous affair, a barbaric punishment. The art that bled from you was not good, it will not bring more eyes, it will not make more coin.

You will forget there was ever a time when it only needed to be good enough for you. You will forget you ever had an idea, because every idea you work on will be belong to the ALMIGHTY CLIENT. And suddenly, you will wish for the lonely writer who did not make money from the words, who only wished that they could. You will desperately try to find the inspiration to be the writer that clung to the hope that maybe, one day, the PUBLISHING, the divine event of PUBLISHING will occur.

But the writer is dead. You killed this part of yourself, and resurrecting it means killing off the other writer, --the one catering to clients and customers. And what if the resurrection does not work? You will be left with nothing. No ideas, not even someone else's. What will you do for money? What job can you take when once you strove for the divine PUBLISHING, what is there left for you? And you will doubt yourself, until the professional writer takes over...

You become a slave to the doubt, and a slave to the writer, and all your ideas are dead. They never mattered, because they weren't making any money, after all. And what is the point, whispers the professional writer, if you can't make money? The cold part of you responds, and concurs. Surely.. writing for nothing... there is no point. And you forget the feeling you got. The satisfaction. Now it is all work. And you are tired. Maybe tomorrow, tomorrow... Right now...

We will sleep.