On Professionalism, Elitism, and Things More Important

In which we talk about chasing dreams, walking away from dreams, what it means to be professional, what it means to be elitist, and things far more important than your goddamned writing. 

 

If you follow this Blog regularly, then you know that for the last two and a half months, I’ve been doing preliminary work on several projects for a big unnamed multimedia company. I’d dreamed of this gig since I was six-years old, and while I’d occasionally moonlighted with them before, I was now being offered the opportunity to write for them full-time.

This type of thing is a far more involved process than you might think. It doesn’t just involve sitting down with your laptop and typing ‘Corporate IP-Man crashes through the wall of the Council of Ten’s secret hideout’. Before you even get to that phase, there are meetings, and meetings about those meetings, and meetings to talk about that meeting, and then meetings that cancel all of the previous meetings, and then meetings to decide upon new meeting, and then more meetings.

I’ve been heavily engaged in that for the last two months, taking several trips to New York City and participating in weekly phone calls and email chains and research and pitch sessions. And as a result, my other work obligations began to suffer. There were novels and novellas to finish, manuscripts to critique, things to mail, Lifetimer Packages to finalize, and a metric fuck-ton of emails to answer, and while I was still making an effort to work on all of those things, the time I could devote to them shrank more and more with each passing week.

Worse, I could see a point coming where it would begin to impact time spent with my youngest son (whom I identify in public as ‘Turtle’ because he doesn’t need his real name out there among the crazies until he turns eighteen and then, like his older brother before him, can decide if he wants people to know who his Dad is or not). I have Turtle Monday through Thursday, which means I have Friday, Saturday and Sunday to write, go on dates with my girlfriend, do laundry, clean house, and all the other things grown-ups and writers do. But giant New York-based multimedia companies don’t work on that schedule, and those weekly phone calls and other things were happening while Turtle was here in the house. Now, he’s old enough that he can play by himself for an hour or two, and he’s also enough of a fan of the corporate characters that he thought it was neat to eavesdrop on conference calls about them. But it still felt, to me at least, that I was giving up precious time with him. I don’t know many divorced dads who have as much time with their children as I’ve had, and I’m very grateful to have a profession that allows that, and a wonderful co-parent who was agreeable to it. These last few years have been truly special. In just a few weeks, Turtle will start big boy school, which means this time comes to an end, and the time I have with him in the future will be even more precious.

Unfortunately, things didn’t work out with the big multimedia company. Last Wednesday, when it came time to become officially married, I made a professional decision not to move forward with it. The reasons why are unimportant, and it would be unprofessional of me to go into them publicly. Suffice to say, it wasn’t anybody’s fault in particular. They weren’t cruel and terrible people who wanted me to sign away my soul. If anything, I just looked at how my other professional and personal obligations had already been impacted, and calculated how they’d be impacted going forward, and then I calculated the dollar amount of that impact, and made the professional decision that everything would be impacted in a way that I wasn’t comfortable with if I continued. And so, I chose to not continue with something I’ve wanted to do since I was six-years old. And I’m totally okay with that, because I know I could have done it if I wanted to. And I still could, at a later date. It was an amicable enough decision on both sides. But right now, there are things that are more important, and they take precedence. The folks at the big multimedia company understood because they are professionals. And I made my decision because I am a professional.

So, that was on Wednesday. I got home Wednesday night, picked up Turtle Thursday morning, and a few hours into our day, his pre-school burned to the ground.

If you’re a parent, then you know as well as I do that special kind of fear that only parents live with. You get twinges of it every time your child climbs a tree unassisted, or rides their bike without training wheels for the first time, or gets their first high fever, or lets go of your hand while crossing the parking lot, or chases their ball toward the street, or walks up to you in the backyard clutching a live, thrashing, pissed off snake in each fist and saying, “Daddy, look what I found. Can we keep them?” Children seem to exist in a perpetual state of wonder and fearlessness about the world, and I sometimes think that we parents must exist in a perpetual state of caution and wariness, because we know that the world has teeth. Sometimes, the world likes to bare those teeth at you when you least expect it.

Copyright Tim Smith (all rights reserved)

According to officials, there were several explosions and the fire spread rapidly. 90% of the building was destroyed. They stopped it before the classroom was engulfed, but the heat and smoke rendered that unusable, as well. Had it not been summer… Had school been in session… Well, there are no words. I’m a writer, and there are no words. But there is a picture. See the table on the left side of the photo? That’s where Turtle sat each and every day.

So, if you tell me that I made the wrong decision, and that as a professional, I should have opted for a business arrangement that that would have been great for my career but that I suspected would impact my time with my kid, I’m gonna refer you back to that picture and invite you to shut the fuck up.

There are things that are more important.

Which brings me to this article by the HWA’s Lisa Morton, which appears on the Los Angeles chapter of the HWA’s Blog.

Go read it. Just Lisa’s article at the top. You can read Hal Bodner’s very good article about creating characters later. I want to talk about Lisa’s article on “Professionalism”. I’ll wait till you’re done.

Done? Okay, good. Because that’s a load of horseshit.

Don’t misunderstand. I don’t have an issue with Lisa, personally. The few times I’ve interacted with her socially, I’ve found her to be quite pleasant. Nor do I have an issue with her fiction (I’ve enjoyed what I’ve read of it). But I’ve got big problems with what was communicated in this article, and I’m not the only one. There’s a great discussion about it over on Laird Barron’s Facebook page. I don’t even have a problem with the HWA, per se, other than that, like any other organization or group entity, it is only as good as the people in charge. It’s sort of like the government. When you’ve got Lincoln or Kennedy in charge, you get advancements in human rights, and when you’ve got Bush or Obama in charge, you get the erosion of the Constitution. But I digress…

The HWA is only as good as the people guiding it, and public perception of the HWA is shaped and formed by the public’s perception of those same stewards. There have been great administrations (Dean Koontz, Charles Grant, Craig Shaw-Gardner, Richard Laymon) and not-so-great administrations (S.P. Somtow, for example). Since around 2005, the public perception of the HWA has been that it’s nothing more than a life-support system for the Bram Stoker Awards. It’s not uncommon to hear horror writers refer to it as the Hardly Writing Association rather than the Horror Writers Association (the sense being that the members focus more on the awards and spend more time talking about writing than they do actually writing). To his credit, current HWA President Rocky Wood has made great strides to right the ship again, and change the public’s perception. And, for the most part, he’s got a great team in place to help make that happen — folks like Linda Addison, Ellen Datlow, Joe McKinney, John Palisano, and Ron Breznay, all of whom are dedicated to seeing that vision come to fruition.

Which is what makes Lisa’s article all the more vexing. Imagine you’re striving to become a horror writer. You’ve made a few sales, and managed to stick with it while juggling family and day job obligations. You made a little extra money this year, maybe from a sale to an anthology, and you decide to join the HWA. Then you run across this condescending article written by the Vice-President of the HWA and published on an HWA-affiliated website, and it’s telling you that, despite all of your hard work, you’re not a professional. You’re a hobbyist. At that point, you might ask yourself, “Why the hell would I want to join this organization?” And you’d be absolutely right to do so.

As Laird Barron said in regards to it, “The distinction between pro and non pro writer is mainly useful if one wants to join a club with particular membership requirements, or when engaging in pissing contests.” Or, as Tim Waggoner said, “No one gets to define someone else. You only get to define you.”

A professional writer can be defined as “you make enough money to support yourself and your loved ones from writing that you don’t need to work a day job”, and while that works in the broadest, most general of terms, it doesn’t really hold up under scrutiny. I’m lucky enough to support myself and my loved ones off my writing. I haven’t had a day job in well over a decade. But does that make me more professional than James A. Moore, who moonlights as a barista? Or the legendary Ramsey Campbell, who, a few years ago, had to take up employment in a bookstore? Or Bev Vincent, who gets up a few hours early and writes before he goes to work? Or Michael Laimo, who manages to write two or three novels a year during his morning and evening commute from home to day job? Does that make them “hobbyists”?

In the article, Lisa states that she stumbled into a discussion group of professional writers, and bemoaned the fact that, in her opinion, they were hobbyists because they, quote “chatted about health and told jokes and moaned about personal problems…anything, in other words, but writing careers.” I’m lucky enough to have a pretty broad local social circle composed of writers, editors, and illustrators. When I have a barbecue in my backyard, and the music is playing, and burgers are grilling, and I’m standing around with Tom and Elizabeth Monteleone, Chet Williamson, J.F. Gonzalez, Robert Swartwood, Kelli Owen, Geoff Cooper, Mary SanGiovanni, Mike Hawthorne, etc.,  you know what we talk about? Our health. Our personal problems. We tell jokes. We talk about our kids. Sure, we talk about writing, too, because we’re writers, but our lives extend beyond that. Nobody wants to go to the foundry worker company picnic on their day off and sit there and talk about work. Fuck that noise. The last thing you want to talk about is work. But apparently, such a mindset marks one as unprofessional.

And then we come to the part of the article that really left me scratching my head — the ten questions you must answer yes to in order for Lisa Morton (and presumably the HWA) to consider you a professional. Complete with the disclaimer that, quote, “If you’ve already glanced at these questions and scoffed, you are a hobbyist.”

Well then, let’s see what I am, shall we?

1. Is your home/work place messy because that time you’d put into cleaning it is better spent writing?

No. I have two sons whom I’d prefer didn’t have to sleep in spiderwebs or eat cat hair in their spaghetti, so I clean the house every Sunday.

2. Do you routinely turn down evenings out with friends because you need to be home writing instead?

No. I do occasionally, if there’s a pressing deadline, but not “routinely”. Writing is primarily a solitary endeavor, but there’s a danger involved in living and existing inside your own head. A writer needs to get out and socialize, if only to experience real life and real people so that they can then imbue their stories and characters with more realism. But also because if you spend all your time alone, you’ll turn into a drooling, gibbering mushroom.

3. Do you turn off the television in order to write?

No. I always write with the television (or music) on in the background.

4. Would you rather receive useful criticism than praise?

Yes.

5. Do you plan vacations around writing opportunites (sic) (either research or networking potential)?

No. When I’m on vacation with my loved ones, the last thing I’m thinking about is “networking potential” I’m instead thinking about what an awesome day it was on the beach, and I wish we didn’t have to go back home tomorrow, and that seafood restaurant we ate at last night was really good. Now, in the course of these events, a story idea might present itself to me (in fact, that happens often) and I may, in fact, begin working on it after everyone else has gone to sleep, but the primary goal of a family vacation should be just that — family.

6. Would you rather be chatting about the business of writing with another writer than exchanging small talk with a good friend?

No. In fact, I often want to stab people like that in the eyes.

7. Have you ever taken a day job that paid less money because it would give you more time/energy/material to write?

Sort of. Until I began writing full time, I worked a dozen different jobs: foundry, stockroom, truck driver, telemarketer, daycare, janitor, data entry, etc. All of them were a means to an end — something to pay the bills until I could pay those same bills with what I earned as a writer.

8. Are you willing to give up the nice home you know you could have if you devoted that time you spend writing to a more lucrative career?

No. And in truth, I don’t really understand this question. What defines a “nice home”? Are we talking about material things like new kitchen cabinets and a perfectly landscaped lawn? Or are we talking about warmth and comfort and safety? I like to think I have a nice home. I enjoy it and my children do, too. I guess there are some who might look at it and say, “You live in a fucking cabin on top of a mountain. You have to burn firewood for heat! What are you, Darryl Dixon from Walking Dead?” But it works for me. It’s a nice home because it’s where the people I love gather — even if it doesn’t have vinyl siding.

9. Have you done all these things for at least five years?

No, because so far, I’ve only answered yes to one of your questions. But I have been writing full time for closing in on fifteen years. Does that qualify me as a professional, or am I still considered a hobbyist?

10. Are you willing to live knowing that you will likely never meet your ambitions, but you hold to those ambitions nonetheless?

Well sure, but that’s just human nature, isn’t it? Everyone has dreams. Everyone has things they strive for and aspire to. Earlier this week, I made a professional decision to walk away from mine, because it was the right thing to do for both my loved ones AND my career.

But I guess I’m just a hobbyist.

Here’s the thing, kids. A professional writer is not deemed so by how much they get paid per word, or how many words they produce, or how many awards they’ve won, or what position they hold in a writer’s organization, or how much networking they do at conventions. A professional writer does one thing — they treat their writing professionally. They produce. They edit. They constantly strive to get better. They sit their ass down in a chair and put their fingers on a keyboard and they type.

A professional writer spends more time writing than they do talking about writing.

Now, it’s almost 11am. I need to get a few thousand words done on this novella. Then I’m going to clean the house, play cards with my oldest son, call my girlfriend, and perhaps finish the evening off by reading a good book. My name is Brian Keene, and I am a hobbyist. So far, that’s worked pretty well for me. As always, your mileage may vary…