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Caging the Tiger: Every Creative Writer’s Dilemma
I took a freelance writing course last year to bolster my writing income. Since I was a kid learning to print my ABC’s I’ve had a passion for creative writing. In college I floundered for a useful major, but eventually succumbed to poetry. I’ve worked as a grant writer, published several books of poetry, completed an as-yet unpublished memoir and assisted in the heavy-lifting of a weighty book of names.
Still, writing has never paid the bills. I count on Rolfing, my other career, for that. I am self-employed and own the business, and it’s always brought me joy. I’m grateful for that, since working for others hasn’t typically panned out for me. For many years I cycled through various places of employment, regularly getting hired and fired from a seeming incapability to take orders. I tried to knuckle under for the sake of a paycheck, but so often this other part of me would roar in protest and there I’d be, kicked to the curb again.
The freelance course cost $300 and promised to shape me into a writing machine. I would be doing what I loved, where and when I wanted. First, though, I had to pick a niche. The narrower, the better: I did not, claimed the instructor, want to share whatever ledge I chose to stand upon with a crowd of other writers. She counseled that it was better to be a specialist trained in a very specific skill than to…
