A Day in the Life of a Freelance Writer: An Incredible Story of Abject Poverty, Emotional Breakdowns, and Law & Order Marathons

As a small child my mother would often find me sitting at the round plastic table in my bedroom writing stories in crayon, completely absorbed in my make-believe world.

At five it was cute, something sweet and innocent. At thirty-five, not so much, especially when I am at the grocery store buying Go-Gurts and root beer with money I made from writing anal porn.

But this is my life as a freelance writer.



Trying to explain a career as sporadic as mine to people who actually leave the house to make a living is difficult to say the least. Sure, on the surface it all appears romantic. An office lined with books. The gleaming screen of a laptop computer filled with words. The lonely figure bent over the keyboard, suffering from severe writer’s block. The psychotic laughter as the writer finally breaks through and finishes their story, a short 1500-word piece entitled “Cock Blocking” for a gay men’s mag. The riches will be huge…$50. Just enough to buy turkey jerky, a Red Box movie rental, and to pay the minimum on a credit card used to charge a convenience store burrito at 25% interest. All of this sounds great to a cubicle dweller who spends their hours toiling in office hell, but the reality is very different from the mythical illusion of what a writer actually is – unless of course you happen to be an uber-writer who hires slave labor to write blockbuster novels for you; then, by all means, live the fairy tale.

My day, however, is a bit more pathetic.

6:00am – Up to pee and to watch the cat eat. In the kitchen I try to figure out where the cabbage smell is coming from, but give up after five minutes due to laziness. I spray Febreeze to mask the smell until I am more awake to deal with it. I crawl back into bed and promise myself that I will only lay here for fifteen minutes. Then I’ll go for a long walk.
9:00am – Wake up and talk myself out of walking. Convince myself that I can always do Wii Fit in the evening and double up on the stomach crunches and leg lifts. Go to the kitchen and eat a doughnut.

9:30am – Turn on computer and spend about twenty minutes staring out of the window at a squirrel. Wonder if a story about a zombie squirrel would be interesting. Imagine it becoming a huge hit and Universal buying the rights, then paying me a million dollars. That would be awesome.

10:00am – Check email. Three rejections, one interested party, and an email from an editor friend who wants to know if I can write a 500 word piece on weird masturbation rituals by 5:00pm tonight. No pay, but it will be included on her website. Write editor back and agree to the piece. Delete the rejections, write back the interested party, and go through the rest of the emails from friends and family. Get bored and go to Facebook. Try to think of something funny to post – maybe it would get noticed by the right person and lead to a job…or an agent…or someone clicking the “like” button. Comment on people. Play Scramble. Panic when I notice that it is now noon.

12:00pm – Start on masturbation piece. It turns out to be easier than I thought after I remember that a friend once drunkenly admitted to their own peculiar self-pleasuring technique, which included a shoelace and a bottle of Astroglide. I finish piece and send it off to editor.

1:45pm – Go to kitchen to forge for food. The cabbage smell has evolved into something fishy and its location becomes even more of a mystery. Resigned that I live in a garbage house, I spray more Febreeze. I grab a can of frosting and a banana and head back to the office. I make a mental note to take a shower today and, if possible, to put on deodorant and maybe brush my teeth. I eat lunch and tell myself that tomorrow I will have a spinach salad instead of whipped butter cream frosting.

2:12pm – Check email again. More rejections – this time from potential agents. Wonder if maybe my idea of a picture book for adults isn’t such a great idea. Fall into a depression and wander out to the couch in the living room. Realize that I have frosting in my hair and begin to cry.

2:30pm – Flip through a gazillion channels until I find Mega Shark vs. Giant Squid on the Syfy channel. The movie is half over but it doesn’t matter; it’s not like I am missing anything. Deborah Gibson has sex in a closet with some scientist and I immediately wonder if her song, Only in my Dreams, would’ve made the scene sexier. An article idea sparks: using squeaky teen pop songs and mixing them with movie sex scenes. Would it be creepy or funny? I’m voting for a mixture of both, especially if you paired New Kids on the Block’s You Got It (The Right Stuff) with Brokeback Mountain.

3:15pm – Try to work on my novel about teenagers in 1990-1992, set in my hometown. At an additional 800 words in, I get heavily involved with my iPod and start downloading tunes from my youth. I come up with the idea to release a book soundtrack. I am brilliant. This is the best idea ever. I completely forget about the novel and start creating mix CD’s for friends from high school.

6:00pm – I have accomplished virtually nothing, and I am still in pajamas. I check my email again – only SPAM. I spend the next half hour berating myself for being lazy and easily distracted by shiny things. I have made no money today, and I sent nothing out. In order to feel even worse about myself, I call my mother.

7:00pm – I have finally showered and am fixing dinner for myself and the man whose money-teat I suckle from to pay my bills. He finds the smell, which apparently is a bag of red potatoes that have liquefied in a cupboard. I hand him the Febreeze and tell him to keep spraying until the kitchen smells like a chemical toilet. I open a bottle of wine for myself and pour him some tea. There’s a Law & Order marathon on, and it has my name on it.

12:00am – I am drunk and sitting at the computer writing hate mail to an editor, who called one of my short stories “Common Tripe”. I have already sent out poorly written poems to almost all of my Facebook “friends” and have signed up various family members for bedwetting materials. The bottle of wine was emptied hours ago, and I have now gone into the “company” beer, because, as I yelled at the cat, “The Muse needs refreshments.” It is impossible for me to know that in a few short hours I will be receiving email from all my work contacts about my poem called, You Know Nothing about Art You Asshole. In about fifteen minutes I will pass out on my computer and vomit into it.

So there it is: the absolute truth about my life as a freelance writer. Some days it’s better, and checks come in, and some days I lay on the floor of my office bellowing to the heavens covered in my own filth.

Jealous?