WHAT I DO ALL DAY

You can make a killing as a writer, but you can't make a living. -- Unknown

Just a day, just an, ordinary day
Just tryin' to get by
Just a boy, just an, ordinary boy but
He was looking to the sky

-- Vanessa Carlton

Like most writers, I do not make most of my income by writing. As the above-quoted passage tells you, writing is a trade which either pays very little, or, in rare cases, vast fortunes. There is not really a middle class. I don't mean there aren't writers who pull down, say, 50 - 100 K a year and do nothing else, but even these folks have a high degree of economic uncertainty. They have to work ceaselessly, pay for their own medical benefits, and pray what they're peddling doesn't go out of fashion or the publisher decide they "want to move in another direction." Indeed, the line between a middle-class writer and a hack is a fine one, through no fault of the writer. He wants to work, and he's got bills to pay, so he goes where the money is, banging out true crime paperbacks or formulaic romance novels (four a year) or ghostwriting memoirs or what have you. The fact that what he really wants to do is pen cozy mysteries or epic sci-fi novels is lost in all that sweaty effort to pay the mortgage.

When I was working in the entertainment industry, I saw a variation of this everywhere I went, so much so that I dubbed it "The L.A. Trap." You go out to L.A. to make it in The Industry, but brutal economic realities demand you take that job waiting tables, or working security, or sharpening pencils at a law firm, and before you know it, the struggle to pay the rent eclipses your desire to Make It. Your priorities begin to reverse themselves, and within two years your script, your comedy routine, your band, has become a hobby and your "day job" the center of your life. You never intentionally sell out to necessity: you just surrender the dream here and there, a half-percent at a time, until one day you're 38, have a second kid on the way, and realize you haven't looked at your screenplay in two years. Without ever realizing it, without consciously raising the white flag, you've entirely given up. Or -- and this may actually be worse -- you actually break into the industry, but in an area for which you have no passion or even interest. You want to be a stuntman, say, but end up as an office manager at Warner Brothers. Or you're hellbent on being a movie director, and find yourself working on video game trailers instead. You become like a fish in a tank, who can clearly see the outside world but cannot partake in it. An invisible wall keeps you in a different environment, one which may be comfortable and even lucrative, but does not speak to the desires of your heart.

I have been fortunate enough never to fall completely into the Trap, though God knows I came close more than once, and may yet do so -- as I said, you often never realize it's happening to you, present tense, until it has already happened, past tense. But I do have a "day job," and unlike my former day jobs in video games and the make up effects industry, it is one which requires more than my physical presence and some level of effort. This one has real stakes, meaning real consequences for failure.

As you may know if you've read this blog in the past, I worked in law enforcement from 1997 - 2004. When I hung up my spurs then, I thought it was for good, but the criminal justice world is surprisingly like the Mafia or the Irish Republican Army: once in, never out. And when I decided to shake the dust of Hollywood from my feet in 2020, I found myself employed, once more, by a district attorney's office, this time as an advocate for victims of crime. I had been publishing for four years by this time, and making an uneven flow of money, and winning the occasional award. I had not, however, reached anything like economic independence: I needed steady, full-time work, and as a middle aged man, I also needed reliable benefits. More than that, however, I needed to feel as if I were doing something truly substantive with my time. Something more meaningful and real than baking blobs of pink latex goo into masks for background actors on "The Walking Dead," or ADHD-style video game trailers for the latest iteration of "Call of Duty." So I threw my hat back into the criminal justice ring, and the rest of me with it.

Today is Monday, and I think it rather a typical one for a person in my line of work, both as an advocate and a writer. So without further blather, let me walk you through the last 24 hours of my life.

Sunday night found me banging away at these keys on SOMETHING EVIL, that epic horror novel I've been working on for six-plus years, which is now within just a few thousand words of completion. I have never had such an exhausting, drawn-out experience writing anything as I have on this book, and seeing the finish line approach was both a tease and a relief. I'm convinced every writer has at least one project like this, a nightmare first draft that won't end: well, whatever past-life sins I'm making up for ought to be expiated by this experience.

Because I'd skipped the gym that day, I took frequent breaks to do prison-style calisthenics: I clocked 200 push-ups alone before about ten o'clock. Unlike many writers, I make a concerted if sometimes failing effort to stay in shape, or at least to remain vigorously active, and so whenever I became too restless or unfocused, I started pushing. Last year I might have hit the bourbon to cure those feelings, but in 2023 alcohol is verboten in my home, because like most writers, I have a problem with alcohol, which is to say I have no problem drinking it to cure restlessness, quiet my nerves, mollify boredom, or create a certain mood or atmosphere in my mind.

However, because I didn't get in my cardio or get enough fresh air, I had trouble sleeping. A lot of trouble. My back was inexplicably sore, and I felt intimations of anxiety that never blossomed into a full-blown attack. Come morning I was tired enough to want to call in sick, but of course in the real world you can't do that, so up I went, knuckling the sleep I didn't get from my half-shut eyes.

I dress very formally for work. Today it was a silver-gray blazer with a purple-and-gold pocket square, a paper-stiff white shirt with a mauve tie, black belt, black trousers and black police shoes, topped off by a silver with an amber stone of blood-orange hue. For personal protection, not related directly to my work but rather to my neighborhood and the fact I am recognizably part of the apparatus of the criminal justice system, I sometimes carry a 9mm Walther P-1 in a shoulder holster, but the truth is that carrying guns is a pain in the ass, and so today I was most definitely unarmed. It was cold, so I pulled on a longish black leather coat, grabbed my leather briefcase, and went out the door.

The courthouse is just up the street from where I live. I was at my desk by eight, so for an hour I tried to get some idea of what the week was going to be like -- where I was supposed to be, when I was supposed to be there, what I was supposed to do. To reduce anxiety, I returned a series of calls left on my voice mail over the weekend. I hate doing this, because I never know what I'm getting into when I call these folks: it may be a pleasant and polite five minutes or an hour of shouting. At nine o'clock, however, I had to get up and go: I had to be at a district justice's office at ten, and it was 18 miles distant and slap-bang in the middle of cow country.

In the state in which I live, preliminary hearings in criminal cases are held at magesterial district justice's offices, and every county has a share of them. I am responsible for four. That is to say, every criminal case with a victim in those four jurisdictions belongs partially to me. I drive out, meet the victims, explain the process, and help translate the district attorney's legalese. If there is no D.A. present, I act as a buffer between the victim and the police officer on the case. A surprising number of cops, actually a majority, are quite good with victims, but police work is not always a profession that lends itself to tact and diplomacy.

Today was an easy one. We had no actual hearing. We managed to resolve the case without one. The defense attorney, prosecutor and myself sat in a conference room and worked out the problem among ourselves. There can be wild conflicts between defense and prosecution, just like on TV, but for the most part, some snarking and sniping aside, it's quite professional and businesslike, even friendly. We are players on different teams, in opposition but not necessarily enemies. I have passed many a dull hour in the middle of nowhere with good-natured public defenders, and even some private attorneys.

I drove back to the office. I distributed donuts I'd bought on the way. I don't eat donuts -- I can't hack the sugar rush, or more properly the sugar crash which follows -- but they bring joy to my much-tried coworkers. There is not one secretary, not one paralegal, not one victim-witness coordinator, county detective or attorney in the office who couldn't be making anywhere from 20% to three times the income in the private sector. They do what they do, by and large, because they believe in what they are doing. The quest for substance, for work of real meaning and value, is hardly unique to your humble correspondent: I see it mirrored in the faces of most of my co-workers every day, and this is not idealization. I am way past idealizing anyone. I'm just stating the facts.

Calls and e-mails had piled up, and one of the prosecutors ducked by to ask me when I'd be free to call a whole slew of victims about potential plea bargains in the works. I rummage my notebooks and give him an answer. It's sincere, but probably not true: making plans in our office is almost impossible. Things happen. We do not really control them.

I put in notes of various phone calls and hearings into my computer system. This is a tedious task because I have so many stacked up, and my handwriting is terrible, so translating it takes time, and I always end up feeling like I'm dictating a telegraph message circle 1888 ("JONES says she is OK with the offer 3 - 23 months in county plus costs and fines for the defendant SMITH provided he gets MH and D&A evals with followthrough on recommended TX plus a no contact order...."). While I do this, I take several calls, and have to make notes on them, too. I often discover, later on, that I was interrupted while making notes on Case Y and my paragraph stops in mid-sentence. Then I have to figure out what the hell I was going to say.

Lunch comes and goes. I have it at a bar restaurant down the street with a friend from college. I haven't eaten all day and my fork trembles on its way to my mouth. I can't really afford to eat lunches out like this, but my social life is on the critical list, and even this quick meeting pumps some new life into it. Before I know it I'm back in the office, but not back in my chair: a sudden, urgent request to observe a hearing and report its results to a faraway victim takes me upstairs into Courtroom "B". Of course nothing in court ever goes off on time, so I watch a sex offender get 20 years for hideous crimes, a drug dealer's case get continued for 30 days, a parole violator get remanded to county jail, a mouthy drunk driver nearly get held in contempt. It all sounds terrribly exciting, and sometimes the tension is indeed unbearable, but courtroom proceedings are slow, thorough, and deliberate, and it takes a great deal of patience to sit through them unless one has a personal interest. An advocate must balance their human feelings with the need to keep some level of professional distance. Sometimes this is impossible and we take the jobs home with us. A not guilty verdict in a rape case, a murder case that ends in a mistrial, a scheduled guilty plea in an aggravated assault case that is canceled at the last minute to the outrage of the victim, these things are hard to endure and harder to explain to those seeking justice or vengeance. I have broken out in goosebumps over glorious victories, and had to walk out of the building after crushing defeats, sometimes on the same day. It takes a toll. Every week is a check written against my goodwill, and some weeks the checks bounce. The account is overdrawn. It is for this reason that I have started to curb my drinking and up my exercise. Stress is a killer, but it kills slowly and silently, making us fat, making us drink too much, eat too much, sleep too little, until, bang, we drop in our tracks.

I'm back down to my desk by four. Make a call to the victim to report on her case. Talk with some co-workers about their cases. We advocates are constantly bouncing problems, small victories, chafing defeats, funny or moving stories, off each other, and I know that if I quit this job tomorrow what I will miss most is the M*A*S*H-like cameraderie of the trenches, the way we cover for each other, shore each other up when one of us is buckling, pitch in with advice or inappropriate jokes.

The assistant district attorney who wanted to make calls with me at three now appears at four-fifteen. He knows I'm supposed to knock off at four-thirty, but we have a whole slew of calls to make, and we won't want to do them tomorrow, either, and so dinner must wait. We talk to a half-dozen victims, touching base about fraud cases, assaults, dog bites, car accidents, this, that. I learned a long time ago never to minimize or trivialize a case's importance, because while a $50 theft may seem inconsequential to me who is assigned a half-dozen homicides at any given time, it may be the most important thing in the world to an elderly victim on a fixed income. So our approach is always the same. We always try to put the victim in the driver's seat, empower them, give them a real voice in our strategy. In the vast majority of instances it works. I have never been a people person, and nobody was more surprised than I at how diplomatic I can be, how patiently I can work through righteous anger or what I sometimes feel is petty entitlement, to find a relatively positive outcome to a bad situation. I take my losses of course, and sometimes I take them home...or to a bar to be drowned in High West whiskey on the rocks...but I try hard to fight the fights that need fighting and be content in that itself and not necessarily the outcome. In the end, most victims recognize when we -- detectives, prosecutors, advocates -- have kept faith with them even if we were unable to deliver the verdict they wished. A lot of people forget that Rocky Balboa lost the first fight with Apollo Creed, but the movie was never about winning. It was about victory, which is another thing entirely.

It's well after five before I get home. Pitch black Pennsylvania winter. Another advocate and I stop on the street to commiserate in the cold. Once again I feel that bond, that strength of comradeship which is different than conventional friendship, because it is born out of pressure: the brotherhood of the foxhole.

I'm damnably hungry, so I warm up the food I prepped Sunday night and chop a salad to go with it, pausing occasionally to slip treats to the cat, who also wants dinner. I eat in my undershirt, the thing I no longer call a "wife-beater" because of my job, while watching a television show. The show is about people vaguely like me, having vaguely similar experiences in a big city in Canada, and some folks I know wonder why I would choose this as my entertainment, since it's basically my life with better editing and a musical score. The truth is that stuff like this connects me with the reasons why I choose to do this five days a week, this exactly and not something else which would pay better and make me produce less cortisol. In the fictional adventures of Domenic Da Vinci, the coroner of Vancouver, I see myself, fumbling my way to better karma.

After dinner I realize I once again don't have time to get to the gym before it closes at nine, for I still have to get out my Monday blog, peruse that goddamn horror novel, check on the status of my online book tour, prep my alledgedly liver-cleansing breakfast shake of kale, kefir, and blueberries, prep my morning cup of Mudwatr, lay out an outfit for tomorrow, and get in a shit-ton of push-ups. Oh, and see if the artist I want to do the cover art for a novella of mine is interested. Oh, and check my e-mails about another book tour I'm trying to get from an English promotional service, since I have a surprising number of fans in Britain. Oh, and see what Novel News Network had to say about my latest novel, THE VERY DEAD OF WINTER. Holy shit, it's a good review:

"This book was way more than I was expecting.
I thought this was a great read that really encompasses so many different themes.
Overall I found it to have a great writing style that had such a great storyline. I flew through this story in one night; it is truly a remarkable book."

Trust me, not every reaction to my work is so effusive. This novel has been entered into no less than nine book awards competitions, and so far is 2 - 3. It truly is damned good, but being a sequel, is probably not as approachable to a cold reader as its predecessor would be. I recently had a dream in which a Hobbit -- yes, a Hobbit -- told me, "You're starting in the middle: that's no way to begin a journey!" Maybe he was talking about this. In any event, I wrote down his advice, because in addition to writing fiction, non-fiction and a weekly blog, I also keep a journal, and in that journal record my dreams.

So there you have it, really. It's now 9:45, and I keep remembering things I have to do, like shave, get in those push ups, read a little of "Chinese Diaries," and decide whether or not I need 1/2 a tramadol to actually get to sleep. I know I'll get to it all, but I'm damned if I know how. This is the life of an ordinary, working-poor writer with a day job...which is a little more than a day job. But a helluva lot less than a trap.