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Maj
The cut/delete thing would have taken more time than I could do right then. I was trying to put two articles up on a site. I'll get to it eventually. :)
I'm already involved in an editing business. I've worked with national and international authors through two firms in Texas (Digi-Tall and Entry Way Publishing.) Most of these people are going the self publishing route and these two companies will set up marketing plans and guide people through it. I also take on my own clients for $15-25 an hour---more depending on the kind of editing needed (grammar, versus serious fact checking). There was that one guy, however--- a rapper with serious connections and a wild story, whom I told I required hazard pay from. He agreed. He wisely decided not to do his book. :)
It's tough to break into the agenting business. I've actually looked into it for someone else. I've marketed stuff for writers for a favor at times, but not as a career. If you want to break into the agenting business, or get hired by one, you almost always have to have spent time in the editorial department of a major publishing house. I'm sure there are those who haven't. In fact, I know a few, but they don't have the experience required to sell to the big players. I've been in the position to do that end of it, but it's not my thing. I was a publisher of a magazine for a short time, but my thing is as an editor or writer. I really don't like the other ends of it much.
If I could close my eyes and just pick, I'd go back to what I was doing initially which was writing for national magazines. Then I started editing the newspapers. It was a good mix of writing and production, so I never got bored. The problem is, I'd have to start my own publication to have that job again, and then I'd be a publisher. A Catch 22. So, I'm still looking.
Then there is the all-imporant health insurance thing. That's one of the primary concerns. I'm on COBRA right now. In MD, you get to stay on it for 18 months, but it's so expensive, you don't want to. I can get a cheaper plan, but the RX plans with it are really horrible.
posted by
terpgirl30
on September 30, 2006 at 10:18 PM
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Terpgirl, cut it out, delete the comment and post it!
Or just quote it in your blog, and so direct people back to this one as well!
You neeeed a manager...
Actually, you and Azur ought to go start an editing'agenting business online with GDome's help on the website. Start slow (can't start fast anyway) and build contacts and contracts.
posted by
majroj
on September 30, 2006 at 7:59 PM
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Yikes, PEEK---ignore me
posted by
terpgirl30
on September 30, 2006 at 11:58 AM
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Maj
Okay, this is a riot. or all the "profundity" you added on there, the thing MY eye saw was the last sentence with the John Deere reference. Sigh. I love the things. How bizarre is that. I was married for 21 years into that family. They had an excavation business, so there was always that equipment. I used to joke with people that it was probably weird, but even after I had known my husband for 18 or so years, I STILL used to peak out the curtains to watch him cut the grass on the tractor. There's something about that for me. Shortly after I publicly started saying that the country guy Kenny Chesney came out with that song, "She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy." Well, I ended up with a John Deere coffee mug. I'm never living it down.
I love the 3 million number. Good, solid number, and I totally understand the reasoning. About 5 years ago, Oprah was talking about millionaires, and she said what I'd been thinking all along---millionaires aren't really millionaires. That is, when you live in an area where a 2-bedroom home is half a million, a million doesn't set you apart much.
Before I met the current spouse I had a net worth of about $280, without all the objects...just the basics. My house I sold for $175 or so is in the $400k range now. That would have been enough for me to just freelance doing the things I want to do. I don't require much. My son is 17, daughter out on her own. I would have sold the house, moved to something me-sized, and gone about my business.
I've had 2 estate properties, and I can take them or leave them. If you don't have someone come in and clean them for you, it's just work that keeps you from living, in my opinion. If you are the house where the family gathers, that's another story. We weren't that, so it was just space.
When my parents split when I was 16, my mom made $2.90 an hour. Our rent was something like $400. You tell me how we made it. There were two kids, a german shepherd, two cats and assorted other animals. And we were very, very happy there. If I could bottle and sell anything for people, it would be that knowledge. My mom feels guilty about things she couldn't give me. Things got better as my brother came up (7 years younger than me). I honestly don't feel like I went without at any point. I had friends, I laughed a lot, and my mom would come home from work and crawl into bed with me and we'd share a cup of tea and watch Johnny Carson. That's what I remember. She remembers that we got one Christmas present that year. Mine was a baseball glove, and I can still describe how it smelled. It was the greatest present. Still, until she said that years later, I really didn't think of it as being my "only" present from her. I just remembered I woke up Christmas smiling instead of wondering what sort of bad thing might happen to me that day. You can't buy that.
OOPS, sorry, went off on a tangent there. :)
posted by
terpgirl30
on September 30, 2006 at 11:57 AM
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I'm two cups shy of my daily caffeine allowance, but I'll try to reply..
Lemme see...
1. Did you mean crap in the corners is the common denominator, or religion? I vote for the former. So live in a yurt aor a tipi, no corners.
2.Some say they Maker endowed them with the tools to save themselves, or to save others. Some attribute his/her/their/it's hand/flipper/whatever to every stroke of good and bad luck. Oddly, belief in either proposition and tolerance for the other seems to be inversely proportional to the other..sort of a zero sum situation. Nice setting for a Reformation or jihad, no?
3.I didn't mean to describe anything as a product of a religious experience, I was just making my usual wise/ass profundity. I'm not clear as to what the family was up to...political influence, skirting tax laws, employing underage braceros, or just being hairshirted superiority freaks. I know those sort of groups don't fully accept you unless you do some (figurative, I hope) "killing" for them.
4. Money...Three million after taxes, in a bank account and legally accounted for. Not enough to become bait for the big sharks, and enough to provide for my future and my wife's, with a little left over for other family and charity as needed. Maybe a John Deere six wheel Gator....naw!
posted by
majroj
on September 30, 2006 at 11:39 AM
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Maj
I considered myself a Christian then and now, but maybe I never evolved to the next steps. I'm still at --- It's a good life with lots of crap hidden behind corners. We all have it. If there's a common denominator in life, I think that's it.
I'm one of those who don't understand the whole "save me" thing to God. Okay, in dire things, I pray, I beg, I plead, but I know that someone else has gone through the same thing, and I'm not so special that I get a pass. I just hope for it, if that makes sense.
You have it described there as a product of the religious experience (if I'm understanding it right), and I'm seeing it as a product of entitlement that came when the money came. (I had the money, too, and I didn't act like that. Still, my side of the family is blue collar so I saw that balance.)
Maj, I may put this as another post---would you want to be rich, and if so, how rich? How would it change your life. I'll definitely put this another time, but in the interest of our conversation, I'd like to hear your answer.
K
posted by
terpgirl30
on September 30, 2006 at 8:55 AM
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Terpgirl, the "Ascent of Man" is in phases.
Considered as functions of feeding (apologies to Douglas Adams): "Will we eat?", to "When will we eat?" to "WHat will we eat?" to "When shall we do lunch?".
As functions of religion: "God made the Earth and all that's on it", to "God, save me from this cave bear" to "God, if I make you love me the right way" (usually by giving some shaman a free ride) "you won't drop disasters on my head", to "God, why don't you go smite those annoying neighbors over in the better part of the woods for me so I can be fruitful over there for a while?".
posted by
majroj
on September 30, 2006 at 6:05 AM
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I know of right wing fundamentalists whose beliefs are more about politics than religion. Interesting concept.
posted by
babe_rocks
on September 28, 2006 at 2:51 PM
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Pat B
Thanks...but he doesn't have me anymore. The stuff I told him didn't take. He basically ran away. He's since remarried and started over. It's pretty weird. He basically picked up where he left off when he was 19ish.
posted by
terpgirl30
on September 28, 2006 at 2:06 PM
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What you've described here
is the balance -- the yin and yang. Maybe he needed your strengths to balance his weaknesses, even though "on paper" it looked like the situation was the opposite. He's lucky to have you. :)
posted by
Pat_B
on September 28, 2006 at 8:34 AM
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