I wish I got paid to write - as it is I just do it out of some obscene compulsion to watch penlines blur together into some twisted psychedelic 3am nightmare. I almost got eaten by the letter 'H' last night because it adamantly refused to be seen in such an awful sounding word as 'horticulture.'
I changed the word to gardening instead. G's are more complacent (though it's a nasty little letter, too - it flirts like a coked-up drag act and is pleasantly curvy but built like a linebacker).
How does one land that kind of gig, and who, exactly, do I have to nail and/or kill to...appropriate...it from someone far more deserving? Or is it, like, a lottery thing? 'Our new editor will be chosen by eliminating the unworthy applicants in a STEEEEEEEEEEL CAGE MATCH!'
Retail makes me want to wander the streets in search of a pressure-relieving back-alley knife fight. And the sad thing is, I'm extremely good at it. I used to think I could only sell books because I could talk about, erm, bookstuff - themes and writing styles and whatnot. Turns out it's not even remotely true - I can sell anything. I sell thousands of dollars of completely worthless crap every day, smiling all the way, and trying desperately not to seize on the urge to throttle someone.
I want to be the aging writer who tells stories of working in retail, not the aging clerk who tells stories of when he wanted to be a writer. I know this because I work with a few of the latter and it's wrong somehow, listening to these guys tell stories.
(this is a thank you, in a roundabout way.)