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Write Yourself a Check
By Gwynne Spencer
The danger of reading Funds For Writers is that you really
do get used to being paid for what you write, to the detriment
of family stories that need to be written before you are dead,
when it is much harder. I had accumulated somewhere in the
neighborhood of 275 pages of notes, titles, punchlines, pieces
of anecdotes, when I started writing my life stories, and the
full fledged stories quickly grew to 400+ pages of unedited
mess. In between paying articles, I would make a stab at it,
but it always got shuffled off as a frivolous project because
it wasn't a paying gig. But as birthday after birthday log-
rolled me, I realized I had to attack this project with the
same diligence I would give any other paying market. So I
decided to pay myself.
Of course, being an editor as well as a writer, I couldn’t
pay myself for garbage, so I had to organize all those notes
into something salable. The chunks that developed settled
into categories:
--places I had lived and lived to tell about
--my life in dog years (dog-by-dog)
--people who I hate who have taught me the most
--true stories that nobody would believe
Into each desktop file I sorted all the accumulated bits and
pieces of what I came to think of as the family fruitcake:
great as a gift, even if they don't like it much and no matter
how bad it is, you just cannot throw it out. The projects began
to take on shape, almost the way a nonfiction book (my genre)
begins to form once you've got enough bones for the "muscles"
to attach to.
But then I hit a snag. I just could not force myself to spend
ten hours a week on these stories when other projects (i.e.
paying) were beckoning. That's when it hit me. I needed to think
like a publisher. So every time I had written usable, editable,
perhaps even publishable text longer than 2,000 words, I put $20
in my account-- an empty cashew jar from Costco.
Every time another chapter rolled out, another twenty bucks went
into the jar. The effect was amazing. I started thinking how I
would spend the fortune that was piling up. It was REAL money.
I thought of my beloved old nightgown that was being held together
by seven molecules and even though I hate to shop, I had to
replace it soon. I thought of the new laser printer that would
replace my WalWart inkjet monster. I began to even think of more
indulgent items like a weekend writing retreat at a local
butterfly farm, Wings of Wonder, and envision even a weekend at
the Oregon Writers Colony retreat house at the edge of the ocean.
Every time two thousand words (or more) came marching out onto
the page and were edited, they were paid for in cold hard cash
until the first "book" was done—stories of the summers spent at
the shore. And just like the kick in the pants you get from opening
a check from a publisher, opening up my Cashew Cash was an
adrenalin rush. So now I've got 100 pages of summer stories done,
done, done and a new pastel blue all cotton Eileen West nightgown,
and serious motivation to rip into the next part of the memoirs.
I might even give myself a raise.
###
BIO
Gwynne Spencer just finished the first volume of her family
stories, DOWN THE SHORE 1956: Cape May, which was a big hit
at her recent family reunion. Copies will be available on
amazon.com soon. She also is the author of THE HERO JOURNEY:
A Workbook for Writers which is available on amazon.com and
her website www.gwynnespencer.com .
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