Let Me Pay My Rent in Drafts and Journal Entries. Please and Thank You.

Sheree Greer

My April started with a milestone. After several months of re-writing my novel in third person, I handed my draft off to a few trusted readers. It felt good. I feel like the revision is an important one; the story demanded it, and as a result, What Has Never Been Taught will be a really solid novel. Though grueling and tedious, maddening and sentimental at times, it was also a lot of… fun. I hesitated there. At times I feel as if having a good time while writing or finding a special kind of blissful exuberance while slamming away at the keyboard or laboring over sense of place and dialogue circumvents the whole mystic romanticism of the ‘tortured-artist-fighting-bleeding-dying-and-being-reborn-into-the-darkness-to-suffer-alone.’ I admit, the brooding writer can be sexy. Yet, s/he can also be quite annoying. You choose.

The point is, writing as work is real, but it’s work I love. It’s work I enjoy. It’s work that makes me happy. With the draft of my first novel in the final review stages, I felt something akin to joy, a sort of triumph and accomplishment — a feeling that will only grow as I work to help my book find a publishing home. I’m hopeful. I’m excited. I’m almost high on the shit. So, when the challenge emerged: Hypertext Write Like Hell! I was all over it.  I signed on. Write a book in a year and blog about it. I love it. The challenge will help me stay active to the fiction grind; it will push me to reflect on my habits as I discover and design my process (“Toni Morrison has a writing process. YOU have writing habits.” – Colin Channer, Advanced Fiction Workshop 2008). I envision busting my ass on my second novel, my super-silky, lip-tingling, heart-squeezing, face-melting lightning sandwich dipped in love, which is at present a prequel of sorts that exists entirely as drafts and journal entries. Boom. Let’s get it. I started in earnest, re-discovering said drafts and journal entries, working out a couple character sketches, doing some light editing and marking places for revision. Then, a realization.

While I’m utterly in love with my work as a writer, I also have other work. Pay the rent work. I’m not going to bemoan my gig at St. Petersburg College. I am incredibly fortunate, and the position is really, really sweet. Really. It is, however, a job. It’s work. It’s lectures and grading, student emails and administrative duties. It’s faculty meetings and student activities, long commutes and office hours. It’s a million and one things I’m doing that are NOT writing my next novel. But alas, sometimes, well, more like every time the first of the month comes around, ain’t nothing going on but the rent. Yes, that is a jam by Gwen Guthrie; however, it’s also a dose of bitter truth.

Perhaps that’s the torture. My Work, capital ‘W’ for Writing, has yet (there’s that hope) to yield the type of return that will pay my rent. And my work, my job teaching composition at the community college, provides me with a decent living yet demands time and energies that cut into the Work that means so much to me.

At any rate, I stalled. Writing like Hell was trumped by grading like hell, answering student emails like hell, taking minutes at faculty meetings like hell, and did I mention grading like hell? Suffice to say, April didn’t end on the glorious note with which it started.

On the up side — there’s that hope again — May will be better. I’ve been journaling and thinking through some things for this novel, organizing myself for a couple exciting writing projects that make me shimmy with delight at the sheer thought of Working on them and seeing them through to completion.

Apparently, Writing Like Hell exists in spurts for me, and I am making myself okay with that. It might even be a part of my emerging process: the ever-challenging balance of Work and work, the constant negotiation of feeding the soul and putting food on the table.

Until next time, my friends. I gotta go to Work.

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Header Image by Kelcey Parker Ervick.

Spot illustrations for Fall/Winter 2023 issue by Dana Emiko Coons

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