I’ve been a freelancer for most of my adult life and have always had to balance different jobs. Writing has been an extension of that and I haven’t seen much difference between working with editors and working with directors — except that editors are generally easier to deal with. So far I’ve always had to find time to fit the writing in around the theater because the theater is my dayjob.
In the last two weeks, I’ve realized that this is changing. I got a request for a theater gig in and it straddles the period when I’m likely to be doing novel revisions. So I had to look at it and try to evaluate if I had time to take the gig. This was the first time that the writing had a higher priority.
In case you are wondering, I declined the gig because it wasn’t sufficiently interesting and didn’t pay enough to merit filling my schedule. Sometimes they are.
Congratulations on reaching this significant milestone, Mary. I predict that your writing will pay more and more of your bills as time passes. 🙂
Quite possibly.
Just don’t let the writing crowd out the theatre entirely. I’m still hoping to collaborate with you again someday. 🙂
Oh, don’t worry about that. I love theater too much to get out of it. But being able to turn down a gig because I found it uninteresting feels like exactly the right place to be.
It’s nice to be able to cherry pick freelance jobs. I’m still able to do it just about, but as things dry up I guess I’ll have to consider doing things that bore me. But hey, it’s been a great year, so I can’t complain!
I’d like to see you define not interesting, though. Haha. Does that mean “I wouldn’t have to carry anything normally only carried by murderers or FBI agents on the New York subway?”
Yeah, that’s pretty much the definition of an uninteresting job.