Storytellersunplugged

By Jeff Mariotte

Writing for a living involves a lot of waiting, sometimes for things that you will never, ever get. We put a lot of ourselves down on every page, we writers, and often we’d like to hear from editors that they were moved, or amused, or scared, or thrilled, by what we turned in to them. Wait as long as you like, but some editors just don’t provide that kind of feedback. You’ll hear what’s wrong, you’ll see a copyedited manuscript in which all your mistakes are called out for you—you’ll even, eventually, get the delivery check, which is the best praise of all.

Once a book is finished, we wait to see it in print. This can take many months, sometimes a year or more. After that comes yet more waiting to see how the public will respond to it.

Other waits are even more exasperating, though (because another truth about writers—at least, many of us—is that we already believe what we wrote is worthwhile, even without hearing it from our editors or fans. If we didn’t, we’d never send it in, never expect strangers to be willing to shell out money for our tales).

Much of my income comes from writing licensed fiction, or work-for-hire. With this type of book, an outline is essential because the licensor wants to know what you’re planning to write before you actually write it. After the outline is finished, you’re in for a wait while the editor, and then the licensor, reads and comments on your outline.

I finished my last work-for-hire novel at the end of January. Currently, I’m waiting for a phone call with a TV producer to hammer out some final details about a novel based on his show (which comes after waiting since mid-February for feedback on the outline). I’m also waiting on a collaborator to finish an outline for a different novel. Because it’s how the universe works, both of these will finally be ready on the same day, and due the same week. Wait, then scramble, then wait some more.

During the time that I’ve been waiting to start these two paying gigs, I have written: an original supernatural thriller (which my agent is shopping now—the most excruciating wait there is), two short stories (one sold to an anthology and paid, one not yet submitted), one short comic book script (sold and paid) and three full-length comic book scripts (back-end deal, not paid until after publication), and four Storytellers Unplugged columns, not to mention random blog entries, web updates, and other lesser bits of prose.

If the original novel sells, great—that time wasn’t wasted (financially speaking, not creatively). But since the regular, steady gig is the work-for-hire stuff, and that’s all been in the waiting stages, there haven’t been regular paychecks for much of the year so far. Which brings us to another aspect of Waiting for Writers 101—waiting to be paid.

Publishers like to hold onto their money as long as they can. So do I, but the grocery store likes to be paid when you take their food away, and the power company likes their money on time. The writer doesn’t get to make that kind of demand from the publisher, though (in 99.9% of cases, anyway). So we wait, and when the publisher feels like cutting a check, they do. As a writer, you’ve got to be careful about cash flow so you can survive those long periods of no money coming in, then everything owed you showing up at once.

A professional writer (at my level, I’m not talking about the Thomas Harrises and Dan Browns of the world) can’t afford to relax on the beach during these long waits. I have to keep working, keep exploring new avenues, new angles. Working keeps the creative muscles flexed, allows me to continue honing the skills necessary to improve my craft. Exploring in different directions can lead to opening up new markets that might pay off down the line.

Somewhere during the development of the English language, I’m convinced, a mistake was made. Waiters who work in restaurants don’t really wait—if anything, we wait for them to bring us our food and the check (especially when we’re late for a movie). They should be called “servers.” Writers wait. Even as we’re writing, we’re waiting (and while we’re waiting, we should be writing). “Waiters” definitely applies to us, but if we tell people that we’re writers and waiters, they get the wrong idea.

This is something that should be fixed. This is also the kind of thing that occurs to writers with too much time on their hands.

Too much time spent waiting.