This is not truth.
It is my version of events.
It is how I remember it happened.
It is how they remembered how it happened.
It is an oral history.
It is what someone dares say on the record.
It is the story of someone who wants to […]
The Treachery of Words — BREVITY’s Nonfiction Blog – By Kristina R. Gaddy
Read this entire post.
One day my words will be as well written.
One day…
“For a moment, I expected the impossible. And then it happened.” Where are you? Wild winds whipping up against a desolate landscape. Cold skies and a raging heart. You have been uprooted. Torn from the comfort of the ordinary, you have been exposed. But do not go blind, little dove. Look around you. The […]
via What Becomes — The Wild Heart of Life
Beautiful. Thank you.
The Authors Guild’s 2018 Author Income Survey, the largest survey of writing-related earnings by American authors ever conducted finds incomes falling to historic lows to a median of $6,080 in 2017, down 42 percent from 2009.
The Authors Guild surveyed its membership and the members of 14 other writers organizations in 2018, receiving detailed responses from 5,067 authors. This included traditionally, hybrid and self-published authors who have commercially published one or more books. When discussing median incomes, the survey looked at both full-time and part-time authors.
The respondents reported a median author income of $6,080, continuing a sharp decline over the last decade: $8,000 in 2014 and $10,500 in 2009 (per the Authors Guild’s 2015 Survey), down again from $12,850 in 2007, as reported in a joint Authors Guild/PEN survey.
Earnings from book income alone fell even more, declining 21 percent to $3,100 in 2017 from $3,900 in 2013 and just over 50 percent from 2009’s median book earnings of $6,250.
The survey showed a shift in book earnings to other writing-related activities, such as speaking engagements, book reviewing or teaching. Including those sources, respondents who identified themselves as full-time book authors still only earned a median income of $20,300, well below the federal poverty line for a family of three or more.
Add writer to the list of occupations to steer your grandchildren away from.
I am a non-professional non-paid writer. And professional writers don’t make much more than I do writing.
Read the entire article here.
Thank you Janine for putting into words what a lot of us are feeling.
By Janine CantyI could give a five hour talk on how I’m not a Real Writer.
When I was 18 and headed to college for journalism I believed the Real Writers all lived in New York and had their shit together. They smoked long cigarettes, and had voices like gravel mixed with honey.
I did not make it to college. Because I didn’t have my shit together. I got knocked up to a Meatloaf song instead.
I almost forgot the writing dream in the ensuing years.
Newborn babies that kept coming. Two AM feedings. Colic. Stretch marks. Mastitis and ice in my bra.
Then I took the writing dream and I hid it deep. Because the boy I married was made out of mean. He wanted to own every part of me. And the things he couldn’t own, he destroyed. So I buried my writing dream.
Then I got…
View original post 673 more words
Nearly half of Americans would have trouble finding $400 to pay for an emergency. I’m one of them.
Source: Many Middle-Class Americans Are Living Paycheck to Paycheck – The Atlantic
Neal Gabler is a visiting professor in the MFA Creative Writing and Literature Program at the State University of New York, Stony Brook. He is the author of a forthcoming biography of Edward Kennedy and five other books.
Ever since my undergraduate days I’ve dreamed of being a writer. Not only do I love to write but I have to write. I write almost every day. I just don’t get paid to write. Having just read Neal Gabler’s article I feel the decision to pursue a different line of work and become a non-writer was a good decision. I just never thought that 40 years later I would be doing what I did for a living as a 22 year old kid fresh out of college.
No regrets.
Happy Mother’s Day to all.
Two months ago I wrote about shifting my emphasis on this blog away from medical news and information for life underwriting professionals to more of a writer’s blog. The shift was to highlight my transition to professional writing services for hire. Since I posted that change in direction, I’ve found my posts completely unchanged in character and broad content. I’m still linking to great pieces of medical news. I’ve not written anything.
Change we must. I just need to figure out my time commitments and find some of that elusive time to write more.
I’ve always felt that good writing comes from good thinking and that learning how to write well is difficult. With the advent of the Internet you can find wonderful teaching websites for the craft of writing. My inner underwriter has always believed that if underwriters were taught how to write about disease we could ultimately better understand some of the cryptic medical language found in the APS’s we read every day. Well you’ll never guess what I found while doing some purposeful surfing (not mindless).
I’ve added a link to the training modules from the U.S. National Cancer Institute’s Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) Program at Emory University, Atlanta SEER Cancer Registry, Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.A.
This training website provides web-based training modules for cancer registration and surveillance. When the site is complete, it will comprise about 30 training modules, each covering a particular cancer registration training subject. The site started in September, 2000 and is under continual development.
And to think all I wanted was to find out a little more about recurrent high grade focal dysplasia just to make sure the pathologist was on spot about the colonic mass despite everyone else calling the thing cancer. I’m gonna have some fun playing around in this website.
lifeunderwriter.net 