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LAST TIME ON THE DRUNKEN UNSUCCESFUL FREELANCE WRITERS' BLOG:
(Since most of you are accidental readers than regulars.)

Bet_bar (www.newshole.info) bitched about his political-blog idea being stolen. Lame McCain...brilliant wasn't it?

AND NOW.....what a fucking idiot he's been.

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Like many no-name freelancers I have been bottom feeding, with dignity I like to think. In the big fish tank of writing, I'm that little gray cat-fish that attaches his big mouth to the side of the glass panel. I think they eat the other fish's shit, or dead scales; something like that seems to ring true. That's what it feels like when you are trying to break into a new market.

You get the material the prized fish think are waste. That's what I've been working with the past couple of months. I've written for a giant in the community, and an obscure paper; same old shit assignments. It doesn't matter the size of the publication, for a freelancer the process is the same: you have to become the Rumpelstiltskin of shit assignments, and turn them into gold. Once you gain their trust, you get to keep their first born. (If they double cross you, use your troll powers for some revenge of the decapitating nature.)

I don't mean to hash out tired common sense. I do mean to find the whole propose of being a freelancer.

Is it to be your own boss, and answer to no one's whims but your own? Or is it a temporary position while you find a steady staff job?

Lets exclude the freelance superstars: the well established names that can write their own ticket. And lets exclude the top 50 % of word smiths that dedication, and hard work have made their freelance careers viable and profitable.

The focus will be on the bottom half, the bottom dwellers, the cat-fish if you will. A handful of bills here, a heart full of hope there, these are the dreamer types that can't make it on freelance work alone, but wish to make it work. Why do they do what they do? Is it to be one's own boss, or to have temp-work while something concrete comes along that drives these people?

I must admit I don't even know where I stand. In the short time I have been collecting clips in a market I haunt, I was given an opportunity to not only be on staff, but to be an editor. An unheard of opportunity for a steady paying job, with a nice title for a newcomer to the scene.

I purposely fucked up the interview, then got balls-drunk to celebrate. When I mean by purposely, is that in the middle of the interview I pointed out how bad some of my answers were, and how I didn't really have any interest in the position(s), but “I could do it well, if I had to.”

And after a victorious two-night bender of whiskey and beer, I woke up with terrible dread that had nothing to do with possibly impregnating a leach of a woman. I let go of a fancy job that tons of people like me would want, and I did it in the middle of a recession that might turn into a depression.

I threw away, not one, but two positions that I could have filled if I hadn't constantly complained, TO MY INTERVIEWER, that this editorial job would have gotten in the way of my collecting clips.

“YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE!,” is all my sober brain keeps telling me. What is it about a sauced brain that keeps telling you everything is a good idea?

I have been so gun-ho about writing, and collecting clips in this work sabbatical that I lost track of what a tremendous foot in the door those editorial jobs were.

YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE!

For those of you accidental readers (since most of you are accidental than regulars) this blog advocated that if you were serious about a career in writing but were toiling away in a distant field that you take six months out of your life to go after your dreams. My personal six months turned into a year and change. My savings were decimated, now I'm poor as fuck, and I'm turning down jobs in my field of choice.

YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE!

And this is despite the fact that in that year and change sabbatical I have applied to Video stores, and Movie theaters for mindless work to get some cash.

Here were two jobs, that I didn't have to share with pimple-faced teenyboppers as my bosses, that weren't mindless, and if I couldn't be a writer I could still work in my field.

YOU FUCKING......ah....what's the point?
The point stems that my mildly medicated brain said that I was a writer, and that job didn't offer writing, it just offered byline-less stress. I needed clips because I am looking to break into this field. LOL Yes this is an advertisement for sobriety. That Alanis chick should have used this for her song Ironic instead of those imperfect examples.

So when your sober, why are you a freelance writer?

Are you a rolling-stone of a mercenary writer, going from one pub to the next delivering the fresh corpse of content for a fee? Or are you more of a bus-boy writer, collecting the scraps off tables and putting them into your tray of clips, waiting for your big break?

Judging by the grimace on my face, the bank account that everyday inches closer to zero, and the sickness in my stomach that didn't clear after the numerous vomit purges, I think I'm a bus-boy with a mercenary complex.

I'm not sure what others may think of themselves. Just like Janitors call themselves Sanitary Engineers, out-of-work writers might call themselves freelance writers.

So find out what kind you are, and plan accordingly, you fucking assholes.


---BET_BAR
www.NEWSHOLE.info