Chaleen:

That was a great article, and it’s the truth. I realized it a long time ago, but I never really understood until I started musing on it myself a few weeks ago. It’s a fact though: To make money as a freelance writer or artist or musician or whatever, you have to view yourself as a high priced prostitute. It’s just a fact.

Just like prostitutes may have husbands or people they actually enjoy sex with, as opposed to people they work for, you as a writer may have work or writing or whatever you consider “holy” or “sacred” and untouchable. In order to put bread on the table however, the rest must be sold to the highest bidder.

Here’s another fact and don’t forget it, and maybe this is the New Jerseyite in me: Ain’t no shame in puttin’ bread on the table and gettin’ the mortgage paid and gettin’ the kids fed and the wife flowers and gas in the car and a dime for Sunday School. No shame at all in that that I can see. I think artists of all stripes have funny ideas about the holiness or sacredness of art, and I think there are plenty of publishers, etc. willing to take advantage of those entrenched notions, but when I was in really bad medical shape last summer, it wasn’t any publisher who helped me with money to get out of it.

Anyway. Keep on keepin’ on.

“Fame is easy, rites of passage not so much.” Indeed.

Dave