funny how
dentist, draftmaker, drill seargeant
Whenever people ask, So do you make a living from your writing, I feel obscurely coal-hauled, if not outright keel-hauled. Does anyone ask this question of an architect, a dentist? It’s so personal and somehow lip-smackingly censorious. I hear behind it two subtext questions: 2: “So. Is your writing any good?” and 3: “And am I subsidizing it?”
The hundreds of times I have been asked, “So: do you make a living from it?” the question has never once been accompanied by, “Ah! Is your writing for sale? Where can I buy some?” But I answer the spoken and the unspoken questions either to myself or, if asked rudely enough, out loud: 1: No. 2: Yes. 3: No, so you’re not my employer, so you can put those eyebrows down.
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