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HIGH DREAMS, LOW OVERHEAD
By Dean M. Shapiro
I woke up one recent morning feeling very depressed.
Not a nice way to begin a day – or an article – but don’t
stop reading yet. The story gets better.
I had just spent $2,000 to get the engine replaced in my
seven-year-old car. Two thousand dollars, because a $25 part
– a timing belt – broke and other vital parts in the engine
broke with it. And it left me broke. Broke and behind on all
my bills, including my rent.
Of course the cause of my vehicular seizure had to be the one
exception to the power train warranty my car was still under;
the one thing most likely to go and the manufacturer knew it.
And stupid me for not reading every word in the 80-page owner’s
manual and knowing it also. But the dealership would be more
than happy to replace the engine for me – for only $4,100! I
told them what they can do with their forty one hundred dollars
and it has something to do with a place where the sun doesn’t
shine. Then I shopped around and got an estimate for half that
amount.
Two thousand dollars, to most working people, may not seem like
a lot of money but for a freelance writer who has finally --
after 40 years -- mastered the art of getting by on $1,200 to
$1,500 a month, it’s a killer. An unplanned expense like this
can (and does) throw everything else off: especially a carefully
planned budget. It’s something we all would like to be prepared
for and all of us should have some kind of a cushion – a
contingency fund – set aside for just this type of situation.
But, with the cost of everything these days . . . ha! Good luck
on that.
So I sat down and did my I.O’s. (as in I Owe), calculating
everything I was behind on, and came up with $1,271.10. Depressing.
But when I did the numbers for what I had coming in, guess what?
. . . the sun came out! $1,850!! See, I told you it gets better.
My granddaughter was actually able to get a few extra Christmas
presents after all.
There are two lessons to be learned from this: keep your overhead
low and your income incoming. Keeping overhead low may sound
elementary and, when there’s not much income to begin with, you
may not have any choice in the matter. But, we’re all human – yes,
writers too -- though some unknowing souls may think we’re
superhumans who love working for little or nothing. And, being
human, we tend to want things we can’t afford and we hate to be
denied.
Well, deny yourself anyway. It’s not easy and it’s not fun. It
may entail staying home and working on a Friday and Saturday night
instead of going out to your favorite music club and dropping $60-
$80 between the bar and the musicians’ tip jar. It might mean
putting off that nice little weekend getaway you’ve been itching
to take in the Tennessee mountains. It might mean doing without a
lot of things you want. Suck it up and do without them anyway.
I might have had to junk my car were it not for a $1,000 check I
knew I had coming in, thanks to a series book writing job I
completed three months earlier. Coupled with the thousand dollar
check I get every month for writing an online tourism newsletter,
it was enough to put my car back on the road – for half the price
the dealership wanted to charge me. Having half of what I needed
in hand and knowing the other half would be arriving soon enabled
me to negotiate a 50-50 deal with a mechanic I knew. If I had been
living beyond my means, there’s no way I could have done this.
Like all writers whose writing is their sole source of income
(and not a hobby or a sideline), I dream of hitting the big payday:
That blockbuster novel that makes the NYT Bestseller List or the
screenplay that turns into a blockbuster feature film. And I am
confident that my day will come as long as I keep working toward
it and I don’t let the dream die. In the words of one of the real-
life characters in one of my ten yet-unsold screenplays, “When a
dream dies its fate must be shared by the dreamer as well.”
That wasn’t my protagonist speaking. It was me.
BIO
Dean M. Shapiro is a freelance writer from the New Orleans area.
His sixth book, Historic Photographs of Louisiana is being
released by Turner Publishing Company in February.
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