Joe Merrill writes to ask…
I'm impressed that you've been making a living as a freelance writer since you got out of high school. Did you ever have any other job in your entire life? Did you ever even apply for a job that didn't involve writing? What would you have tried to do if you needed money and it wasn't coming in from writing?
Well, I have been paid over the years as an editor, a director, a producer, a songwriter (I guess that's writing), a performer (a few aberrant times) and one or two other things that from my point o' view were just adjuncts to writing. I'm assuming though you're asking about jobs that in no way connect with writing.
Remember here that you're asking a guy who's really, really inept at most things. I sometimes think — and this is not tongue-in-cheek self-deprecation — that I became a writer because it was the thing at which I felt the least incompetent. I gave up a number of other professions that interested me like drawing and magic because I decided I could never be good enough at them.
When I was sixteen or so, I did some babysitting for a family down the street. I'd play games with the kid until it was time for him to go to bed, then I'd set up my little Olivetti portable typewriter on the family dining table and write things until the parents came home. Does that count?
A month or so before I got out of high school, my parents suggested (strongly) that I look for a summer job to do between graduation and starting college. I was somehow persuaded to go to a Job Fair out in Santa Monica which was set up to connect kids in my position with openings.
I took the bus out there and waited, as I recall, for about three hours until I got to sit down with a harried lady who had lists of possibilities. The idea was that I would tell her what kind of thing I wanted to do or that I thought I could do, she would scan her lists and then she'd set me up with an appointment to go in and interview for the closest thing she had.
I knew I couldn't say to her, "I think I could write comic books or TV shows" so I told her I had some limited experience in page design and layout — maybe something in a print shop? Or failing that, I'd painted some walls in our home with a minimum of screw-ups so perhaps I could work for a painter?
Those sounded reasonable to me. I could never have made either my life's work but I thought I could bluff my way through a short-term job in one of those areas. To this lady though, it was like I was asking her to get me the starring role in the next James Bond film or maybe become the junior senator from the great state of California.
She reacted in simultaneous shock and laughter and said to me in a scolding tone, "No, no, no, you can't get a job like that starting from where you're starting." She scanned her lists and then wrote me out a referral to apply as an apprentice cutter for a firm that had something to do with furniture upholstery and carpeting. To get to the address, I would have to spend 90+ minutes and go through a whole pad of bus transfers.
I left in kind of a daze, wondering if she'd expected me to say, "Well, you know, I've always had my heart set on cutting fabric for ottomans." On the sidewalk outside, I ran into a cluster of guys I knew from high school who'd all just been through the same process.
We compared results and every one of us had been set up with an appointment to see about becoming an apprentice cutter for this firm that had something to do with furniture upholstery and carpeting. My interview was set for 4:00 in the afternoon the following Wednesday and Don Schwartz's was with the same person for 4:05.
Don asked what kind of a job interview could get you in and out in five minutes. I said, "I think it's just a test to see if you can show up on time wearing pants and not clutching a weapon."
I did not show up at all, with or without pants or weapon. Instead, I redoubled — maybe retripled — my efforts to make some money quickly as a writer. I did it in time and then one sale led to others, so I never had to do anything else. At the time, I considered myself extraordinarily fortunate and I guess on some level, I still do. Still, over the years, I became aware that I might have missed out on something.
There are certain social skills one learns in a work situation and they're quite different from anything you learn in a school situation. As a freelance writer, I was working at home a lot in those early years, not interacting on a daily basis with employers or anyone else involved in my work. It therefore took me a lot longer to learn some of those manners and skills than it might have if I'd labored in an office or business, especially if the job involved interfacing with the public.
I know actors who both love and hate that at one point in their lives, they had to wait tables or sell shoes or whatever. They resented devoting such prime years of their lives to something that would not advance them on their eventual careers, all the time fearing that those jobs would become, by default, their eventual careers. But they all still spoke of how valuable it was from a personal growth standpoint.
I don't think I would have gotten hired to cut fabric. Back then, I would have resented even going in for that interview so much that I wouldn't have been able to conceal it. Still, it might have had its value to me, at least for a little while…maybe.