Thursday 9 September 2010

How Not to Have a Secure Income

I have made a decision. One of those life-changing yes-now-I-like-olives of decisions. Some are born decisive, some achieve decisiveness, and others have decisiveness thrust upon them. I fall into all three categories but mostly at the moment I’m having it thrust upon me. And perhaps not in an alluring sort of way.

For the last little while, or year, I have been working every afternoon as a child-minder, house-keeper, ironic-ironer sort of person. This was very jolly and I got paid every week into my bank account so that, in the usual way of the world, the council, utilities and suppliers of totally necessary chocolate cake could remove it from the aforementioned depository. Redundancy is being thrust upon me. Possibly because the children are all grown up, the house has decided to become independent and the iron has made a bid for freedom in eternally lumpy wrinkled sort of places.

I have made a decision. A career change. I am going to be a writer. Now, this may sound familiar. As I am actually already a writer. This time, however I have decided to become a PAID writer!

All my writerly friends will probably wonder what in the world I’m talking about. Surely we do it for the love of the craft, our addiction to verbiage and our attempts to break the world record for Rejection Letters from Publishers Received?
That was when we had other incomes, or husbands or faith. Now we are not so well endowed or faithful. A bit like husbands. I have a cunning plan to prostitute my art. I have been on the internet. These are the jobs that writers can do if they really want:

Blogging about things you have never heard of (some education will come free with this).

Ghost-writing stories of people whose lives really make the rest of ours look like a energy-saving lightbulb.

Advertising copy for selling stuff we may never have heard of (again good sideline in education.

Writing random things in the hope that someone will host a related advert. I can already actually do this with this blog and you may all note the lovely ads.

Feel free to click.