{"id":76,"date":"2009-11-12T18:44:36","date_gmt":"2009-11-13T00:44:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/?p=76"},"modified":"2009-12-04T12:23:13","modified_gmt":"2009-12-04T18:23:13","slug":"the-economics-of-writing-sucks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/?p=76","title":{"rendered":"The Economics of Writing (sucks)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/whatever.scalzi.com\/2009\/11\/09\/writers-and-financial-woes-whats-going-on\/\">John Scalzi on a writer&#8217;s income, or rather lack thereof.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Most of these are more true than not. I&#8217;m probably in a better position than most, because:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I have a day job, and have had a day job of one sort or another (with occasional gaps as long as nine months) for the entirety of my adult life.\n<li>I&#8217;m a cheap bastard. Save my bookshelves, just about every piece of furniture I&#8217;ve added to my house was someone else&#8217;s castoff, so my house resembles that distinctive decorating style known as &#8220;Early College Student.&#8221; My TV is an old non-HD hand-me-down. My phone is the cheapest piece-of-crap Verizon had five years ago (and I&#8217;ve since replaced it with a used copy of the same model bought cheap off eBay); I suspect Fisher-Price now sells a phone with more functions. It only took me five years to decide that I could finally afford to buy a $10 spoon rest. (You get the idea.)\n<li>I&#8217;m paranoid enough to always keep a good chunk of money in the bank for emergencies. (That&#8217;s also why I paid off all the bills I wracked up in my 20s in my early 30s.) Given the additional uncertainties here in <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.reuters.com\/james-pethokoukis\/2009\/11\/11\/12-reasons-unemployment-is-going-to-at-least-12-percent\/\">the era of Hope and Change<\/a>, I&#8217;ve recently doubled that amount. As former Intel Chairman Andy Grove was wont to say, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.intel.com\/pressroom\/kits\/bios\/grove\/paranoid.htm\">&#8220;Only the paranoid survive.&#8221;<\/a><\/ul>\n<p>I would mention that my health has generally been pretty robust (certainly nothing like the host of maladies that, say, poor George Alec Effinger suffered), but that&#8217;s just asking The Giant Frying Pan of Fate to whack you upside the head for tempting it so. So (*cough*) I guess (*wheeze*) I won&#8217;t. (*Uh-oh*.)<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, I&#8217;m doing a lot better than some, but I&#8217;m always looking out for ways to add to my financial cushion, the better to keep the wolves a few steps further from my door. A working spouse would be nice. If you&#8217;re an attractive single female, the line forms to the right. (No shoving and, as always, please, no wagering.)<\/p>\n<p>By the way, on <i>a completely unrelated note<\/i>, I&#8217;ve added a Paypal donation button to this page&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>John Scalzi on a writer&#8217;s income, or rather lack thereof. Most of these are more true than not. I&#8217;m probably in a better position than most, because: I have a day job, and have had a day job of one sort or another (with occasional gaps as long as nine months) for the entirety of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":9,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,5],"tags":[118,119,117],"class_list":["post-76","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-science-fiction","tag-economics","tag-personal-finance","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=76"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":226,"href":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76\/revisions\/226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=76"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=76"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=76"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}