Technically, I became a professional writer at age nineteen.  That’s when I sold my first piece to my university newspaper.  It was new and exciting to see my name in print.  A little later I became a staff writer and columnist and would get angry when some overworked, underpaid staffer pulling an all-nighter in paste-up would screw up and drop my by-line.  The pay was too meager to be a concern, it was all about the ego trip back then.  Hopefully, I wasn’t too insufferable, but I doubt it.

Getting paid is the measure of being a professional.  When amateur painters start getting paid for their work, they transform from pursuing a hobby or passion to engaging in commerce.  This doesn’t make them Michelangelo, it just makes them a professional painter.  Remember, I said that getting paid ‘technically’ makes you a professional.

 I functioned for years after college working professionally while cranking out reams of stuff on spec as I toyed with different kinds of writing.  I freelanced small pieces to local and national magazines; I sold ideas for stories; I sold jokes and comedy sketches; edited liner notes for LPs; wrote script coverage, radio news, ads for TV and radio, PSAs, and on and on.  I got a job rewriting a screenplay at MGM.  I was struggling, but building a resume in drips and drabs. 

I was a professional alright, but it was the ‘myth’ of being a writer that captivated me, and I was trying to live the myth as I hobnobbed in café society.  Unfortunately, I was lazy, poorly organized, a terrible net worker and had lousy follow-through.  I had no realistic career strategy, poor writing habits, and didn’t know a thing about marketing.  I wasted years carousing, chasing women, and basically screwing around.  Oh it was fun and I was a professional writer.  Technically, a professional.  A real writer?  Hardly.  Not in what has become my opinion of what a real writer is.  I was a dilettante and didn’t know it.

One day I woke up and realized I’d just lost a decade.  I’d bought the volume Writers At Work some years before, but never even finished it.  I’d only made feeble attempts to replicate the commitment those writers evidenced.

See, I’d been committed to the myth of being a writer, but not to the reality.  I’d always relied on my youth, charm and good looks to get by.  I was reminded of the old saw about the pretty, party-girl actress who tried to sleep her way to the top.  You can’t sleep your way to the top; you can only sleep your way to the middle.  As I looked around, I wasn’t sure I’d even gotten that far.

That’s when I decided to seriously commit myself to what it really meant to be a writer.  To every aspect of writing: the business side, the practical side, the artistic side.  It takes a commitment of time, effort, focus, energy and intent that a lot of people aren’t prepared to make.  Some simply can’t.  It takes guts, discipline, sacrifice, love, passion and sweat.

The learning never stops, as I found out after my novel, Unseen Forces was published late in 2004.  Wish I’d taken a few more marketing courses.

If you count all the palm trees inHollywood, then multiply by 10, you’ll be a few hundred thousand short of the number of people who call themselves writers in Los Angeles.  Most every waiter in Hollywood has written at least one screenplay and thinks he/she is the next Robert Towne or Joe Eszterhas.

Spending a month with a buddy on the weekends drinking Margaritas while you crank out a spec script does not make you a writer in my book.  You’re just another pretender as I was, in a city that’s full of them.  Even if you sell that spec script and become a ‘professional,’ flukes don’t always repeat themselves.

There’s simply no substitution for dedication, experience and perseverance.  That’s why it’s so good to see young writers who really sink their teeth whole hog into the notion of this crazy beast of word-smithing.

If only I’d done the same way back when.

There’s nothing wrong with playing at the notion of being a writer.  Just don’t take it or yourself too seriously.  And yes, you can hold down a full-time job that isn’t ‘you’ and still be a real writer.  Lots of greats have done it and you can too.  The requirements become a lifestyle and determine who you are.