[Moon-dæg] Writing Towards A Golden Age

Introduction
Three Helps
Writing and Regular Work
Closing

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Introduction

To live off of your words would be like living off of the bounty of the land. At its best it could be like life in the mythical Golden Age, where the earth's abundance came naturally and humanity had no need for toil.

In this metaphor though, things work backwards. Instead of staring in a Golden Age, any writer starts in the Iron Age - maybe even the "Clay Age" considering how low the pay is at many content mills and freelancing sites.


But through your writing, you, like Merlin, could travel backwards in time to a Golden Age. One where your words are being licensed for translations and adaptations, where they're earning royalties, where they're earning you a tidy portion of shared profits, or where the work just flows and your rates are fair and enviable.

Of course, all of that comes after the iron's been turned into gold. If alchemists still haven't figured it out, then it's certainly no easy feat.

Yet, like the alchemists and their mad quest for that mystic formula, the potential to live sheerly from words is what fills the pursuit with promise.

As bipolar as it can be trying to do something so artistic (or even just psychological) in a town of engineers, labourers, restaurateurs, clerks, servers, and such, it is a rewarding thing to do.

On the one hand it's possible to show all of these concrete-thinking, left-brained people that you can live from something as airy as words and ideas, and on the other, well, you can show yourself that you can live on such airy things as words and ideas. Because that's the biggest hurdle starting out. Really, truly, and seriously believing that you can make it as a writer. It's not always a pretty process, but there are certain things that can help you along.

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Three Helps

Being part of a writing group is the best way to start. Regular feedback and the ability to talk to other people about writing can jazz you up and make you feel ready to tackle any project, to mould words into any form.

Getting paid to write, definitely helps. Even if it's not a rate that's going to allow you to work only hours a week, getting something for your writing beyond praise, accolades, or even just serious acknowledgement is great.

Having people ask you to write for them is also a great boost, especially if this contact is made online. For such a person practically could've worked with anyone in the whole wide web, but by coincidence they found your stuff, and your stuff was just what they were looking for. Such an event is great. It's grand. It's a big help when the people around you go silent upon your announcement that you're a writer, or regularly bring up that such and such store has a help wanted sign in the window.

But that's not to say that being a writer means you're a one-job person.

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Writing and Regular Work

People write and hold down "regular" jobs, too. But that's not what every writer does. After all, there's that freedom that comes with writing, that ability to work as hard as you like at it. you can throw all of your weight into it because of one thing or another, or you can just do it, but do it seriously, in whatever spare time you can muster.

Again, here comes a generalization, but if you'd just ended a stint in graduate school and originally been looking to become a professor to "feed your writing habit," then you're probably not going to want to sling fries or assemble boxes while writing on the side.

Turning away from the rush, though, there's the uncertainty. It might mean putting on a happy facade or joining the break room mumblers, but slinging fries and box assembly are at least steady jobs.

People will always love fries, and frozen fries come in boxes. You might not necessarily become CEO of either company, but working at that sort of thing is certain, and probably includes some benefit package or other.

These perks mean there's no need to worry about making it on your own, since you know that at the least you'll be getting your livable wage paycheck at the end of every two week period. And if the work is psychologically draining, well, isn't that what the time that you're not working is for?

Writing isn't necessarily different, though. It can be just as stressful, just as draining at times. But if you're not already plan-savvy, trying to be a writer from a room in your parents' house in a small town definitely gets you planning seriously, planning hard.

Plus, planning ahead doesn't have to be all that intimidating. It could just be a matter of setting goals of having so many articles finished in a given time, or so much money made in a month. Like almost every other aspect of being a freelance writer, it just comes down to will power. Saying you'll do something (even if you're just talking to yourself) and then doing it.

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Closing

So, freelance writing, maybe it's a long climb up to that lofty Golden Age, but you'll definitely have plenty to write about when you get there. I know I will.

Stay tuned throughout the week for an opinion about some recent news on Wednesday, and a review of Hideaway on Friday.

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[Moon-dæg] Heading Downstream in a Kayak Called Teacher's College

Teacher's college does seem like the logical next step in a teaching career, but is that the career that I really want? Will teacher's college help me to become a professor at a college or a sessional at a university? It might - formal training in how to educate would be something useful and something grand to put on a resume.

But do I want to just chase resume gems until I get a good job that lets me settle in a city, sees me write some, and live on like that until the end? Or do I want to move on from all of that and actually become something more?

What's really at play here, keeping me down and keeping me back from wanting to go to Teacher's College? What fear is there? What despair? The fact that I'll be jobless for another year at least? The fact that I'll be unable to write as much as I do now? Writing and teaching definitely aren't incompatible, but do I have the gumption and the drive to do both?

I can cite a few examples of writers who started off (and continued) as teachers: Stephen King, J.K. Rowling (who taught EFL (a variety of ESL)), J.R.R. Tolkien, Nick Hornby, Aldous Huxley, James Joyce.

But can I count myself among them? Or am I more of a one-track doer?

Plus, if I'm splitting myself between writing and teaching for a living then what's different from the desired end of a PhD? That degree could get me a job teaching and researching, or, if I worked at an undergraduate institution, teaching with some time for writing. And what's different about working at a college? What makes teaching college desirable despite there being no real hard and fast difference between it and high school or university teaching in terms of time left for moonlighting as a writer?

Honestly, very little. Prestige mostly, something to hide behind while I secretly gain cred as a writer so that to a family of steel and service industry workers I can have something more concrete than writing to show. To identify myself with.

Aside from that, what's at the heart of the issue here? Why is deciding on teacher's college such a struggle for me? Why do I want to be a certified teacher?

Because my job prospects aren't good already? Because I've got no marketable skills? Neither of those are true.

An MA - even in English - is going to pull down some serious clout in the right circles and in the right job hunts.

I think the issue that I'm running into when I do slip into job hunt mode is that I'm living in Small Town Ontario, where people may have advanced degrees in things unrelated to their job (places like this seem ideal for the janitor who studied astrophysics), but where these degrees also mean precious little. After all, what really matters in small towns is connections, but since I've been out of town for the last seven years, I haven't much to go on in that regard.

The state of my connections is slowly changing, but more as a result of having been in town for a while rather than because of my on again, off again job hunt.

Nonetheless, I might need something to pick up the financial slack left by freelancing. Going to school in September or saving up to go overseas, or saving up just to move to a dream town where I have a job as a writer or journalist all takes money. And that's something in short supply right now.

Things are on an upswing though and if I work really hard, then I can probably raise enough by September to pay for a semester of teacher's college, or the full cost of going overseas (minus the wedding), or six months worth of living expenses.

Of course, I'm still waiting on acceptances from these teacher's colleges. And that's another thing.

A lot of the papers and columns keep declaring that teacher's colleges should ease up on training teachers that aren't in demand. My credentials lead me to believe that I'd be able to get a place in any of the institutions I applied to. But maybe I won't get into any since English and History are my teaching areas (and the two facing a large part of the oversupply).

But why teacher's college? Why does it matter? Why does it need to be the next step? Why not bang on as a temp college prof? Or go overseas again? The latter definitely seems like a sweet proposition. The biggest difficulty I'd expect to face would be having to readjust to the real Korea rather than the ideal image that my first trip left me with.

As per the former, I think that temping as a college prof would be great, but at 6000 a semester (assuming I'd be teaching two courses and each would pay 3000) and each semester being some four months long, writing on the side would help to cover my costs (by my estimates, 18,000 a year for a one bedroom apartment, utilities, groceries, and enough to treat myself every now and then). This could be a fine arrangement, but I'd need to get my writing off the ground first.

Ultimately, what makes me wary of teacher's college is the fact that there's no guarantee of immediate employment. As naive as it was, I thought that getting my MA would just draw jobs to me (or me to jobs) but such simply hasn't been the case. As my mom puts it, "I furthered my education" but I didn't really think much of the career that might stem from it aside from a professorship (Anglo-Saxonists, alas, are in small demand).

Going further back, majoring in English for my BA stemmed from success in English classes through Grade 12. Then graduate school stemmed from the idea in fourth year that becoming a prof would be good and easy and lead to a life of teaching with periodic bursts of research - the perfect cushion on which to sit and write my novels and poems.

But the MA shattered that myth and showed me the intensity of the research required of profs. This turned me off - not because I don't like research, but because I'd rather spend my extra time writing things that a large audience (or a large niche audience) could enjoy, rather than maybe another hundred, or thousand, or million people with specialized degrees of their own.

Genre fiction also seems like it has more reach and importance than essays on what happened to the Celts after the Angles and the Saxons settled old Britain's shores.

Anyway. I have the MA and no job. Yes. I should have been more pro-active with job fairs and such. Yes I should have had an attitude of, look for work where I am, moving back to Ontario is not inevitable. But I didn't. do I regret these moves to inaction? No.

Why? Because, in spite of the usual things one expects parents and relatives and people in the small town community to say to someone who's starting out as a writer (of all things), living at home gives me the financial freedom necessary to start write professionally and the training in working from home that any disciplined freelancer needs.

In spite of my writing, teachers college looms over me still because it's another described step on a way to success that's more familiar to my parents. Both got jobs that aren't necessarily related to what they trained for, but still they say. So really, I think that's the big reason why teacher's college is even an issue for me. It's what I'm supposed to do. 6 years of being told that, as an English major, what I'll be doing is teaching seems to have taken its toll.

But then we get into what I feel like I've been called to do. I remember the rush experience from my first good ESL class in South Korea. And I remember the rush I get every time I get paid for having written something. Are both the same? Is one more of a rush? One more positive?

Writing and teaching in essence are compatible, and in practice, too. But my feeling is almost as though I've had enough formal education for now, and that maybe I should just stick with freelancing, and take it from there. Work hard at it and see where things wind up.

And teacher's college? Well. We'll see about that next week. Acceptances might've arrived by then (via post or email) and I'll take another look at the question from a logical standpoint.

If you've got your own stories of struggling with compatible/conflicting choices, feel free to share them in the comments. Also, go ahead and follow my blog, I'll follow you back if you've got one!

And check back here Wednesday for my thoughts on a recent attention grabbing article and on Friday for my review of the Donnie Darko sequel S.Darko: A Donnie Darko Tale.

[Moon-dæg] My Gut-Feeling on Teaching ESL in Korea

This is the third entry in my write up on going back to teaching English overseas. The first part gave some hard stats and numbers. The second built on these figures and involved a little bit more information relevant to me. This entry, since this is the entry closest to the full moon, is one that will involve as purely an emotional line of reasoning as I can manage. It may sound oxymoronic (har har), but this is coming right from my gut.

Finances figure largely in this decision of mine. The "start up" costs are pretty much negligible - even if I go over after marrying my fiancée and she comes with. Loans would be needed, but these loans would not linger long enough to stress us out given the kind of cash that we could raise working over there. And who doesn't like making lots of money? This guy definitely does!

But what's my gut feeling about the money I'll make overseas?

I feel really good about it. I mean, I'm not going to be able to go away for five years and then come back a millionaire or anything like that, but that's not what I'm after. Writing can be done while teaching - especially university teaching, since it's not necessarily time consuming (10-20 hours a week, often including prep time). And that means that I could actually be making money while also making a name for myself as a writer.

I've been writing lately (welcome to my blog!), but money making has generally taken a hit as a result. Making money and getting my writing out there, among other writers especially (I have very fond memories of the Seoul Writers Workshop and the Seoul Writers' Collective) and among other people would be awesome. But, then. What's to say that I wouldn't be able to get that kind of flexible employment here in Ontario?

This presents a quandary. But. The plentiful nature of ESL positions overseas is what draws me. And where am I going to find a "city of lights" to quote the Deep Purple song in South-Western Ontario? Granted, they were singing about Tokyo, but Seoul (and even Incheon, my old haunt) are just as bright. So there's still that pull of adventure.

And the fact that I could bring my fiancée with me is icing. Delicious, sweet, strangely nutritious icing.

But then I'd also feel a little bad.

I'd feel that I might be pulling her along with me rather than being joined by her. And I have the sense that as much as she says that she wants to try teaching overseas or to just be with me rather than constantly apart as we've been for the last few months and years before that, she'll be doing something that's outside of her comfort zone.

Stepping outside that zone is a good thing, but then her parents aren't young. Though, her mother is so "Old Country" that with one hand she offers amazing coffee and delicious cooking, but with the other hard criticism and an overbearing opinion. So pulling my fiancée away from that is good - Tauruses within families seem to clash more than cooperate - but it's also bad.

I mean, it's her mom after all. She used to email her nearly everyday when she was in university. They're close. And if something happened while we were away I would carry that with me forever. Not to mention her dad - much cooler, but also just as "Old Country." Though, it's unfair to say that old dogs can't be taught new tricks - years into our relationship they finally let us stay in the same room when I'm over there.

So, having my fiancée with me means that we'd be in for super sexy adventures abroad. But it also means that we'd be away from those close to us. Honestly, though, and this is something that I discovered when I was away the first time, were it not for her I'm not sure that I'd have come back in the first place.

Sure, there was graduate school and friends to come back for, but really, were it not for my fiancée, outside of the temporary situation of grad school, I'd probably have had very few reservations about going back overseas afterwards. I'd still visit regularly (those long summers off (two months once you're a fixture) from university teaching would be excellent for long visits) and I'd have the money to actually *do* things with friends while visiting.

So moral dilemmas aside, I think that there's nothing but benefit for going back from a social perspective. I've lived with my fiancée for a year and we're still together - heck, for a large part of that year we shared a two bedroom basement with another couple. Weathering that took much more than I expect a few years in Korea would.

But then what about the other friends we'd be leaving behind? Skype would work well - it did in my first round - and visits would be possible once we both had more vacation time. Really, I feel that this would be a negligible problem. Some of my collaborative work with friends here, on a fortnightly YouTube skit channel (watch for the first skit this weekend!) and on a Doctor Who podcast, TelosAM, might get more complicated because of the dateline and timezone differences, but co-ordinating schedules is always manageable.

Ultimately, I think that the reason why this is still an option that I'm taking so seriously is that I know that it works. When I was teaching in Korea last I did suffer a little bit of well, not burnout, but I began to feel undervalued by the end.

It was all well and good being a celebrity and probably featuring in one of my young co-teacher's fantasies (she blushingly asked if she could put her arm through the crook of mine when we all posed for a picture on my third to last day), but I was also dogged by the feeling that my students really weren't learning. Maybe that's an argument for not going back - I might just wind up adding to the pile of complaints that some Koreans have about the ineffectuality of foreign teachers.

But this feeling is more likely because of a change to my job description after my first few weeks. What I did in those early days seemed to bore students more than enthuse them. I was totally new to the teaching game then and that my revamped job description dictated that I should make my classes fun rather than purely educational was a welcome break.

But my new m.o. was exactly why I felt as I did near the end of my contract. I wanted to teach my students. I wanted to give them the skills and knowledge necessary to really get English as best as they could. But I had to marry entertainment to education. And my personality made that a little bit difficult to execute.

Nonetheless, going back offers adventure, money, and a chance to actually be self-sufficient. All through my undergraduate years it was almost a bi-monthly occurrence to email my parents and ask them to kick a few bucks my way. But that never happened in Korea. Yes, the three hundred I took as "start up" money quickly ran out and I had to take a small loan from my recruiter to last until the banks opened after my first weekend, but I never had to ask anyone for money after that.

As a student of English who once considered a career in academia, parents and advisors warned me about the dangers of working and making money. And I succumbed to those dangers.

I also know that working overseas is a great way to make lasting friendships. Graduate school certainly was, too. But working in Korea didn't cost me nearly as much. Yet, both have a certain air about them that forges friendships that I can best describe by comparing them to the kind of friendships made amongst soldiers in combat, though I've never been in that line of work.

Honestly, even if I were to stick around Ontario and move to a major city my feeling is that my current friendships would remain and others would spring up anyway. Why not let the others be with people from all the many corners of the world rather than just a few or a couple?

In the end, what I fear the most about going back is that I can't say for sure what my fiancée and I will be getting into. It's one thing if I went over alone and wound up at a crappy school. But I know that potentially bringing my fiancée into the same situation would make me feel directly responsible. I'm sure that she wants to go for her own reasons as well as those involving me, but it does seem to be solely my idea, and so I would feel terrible should anything go wrong for the both of us. If we kept to the public school system, though, that probably wouldn't be a problem. Public schools and big international recruiters (EPIK, GEPIK, JET) tend to be much more legit than many ma and pa out-of-house recruiting agencies.

If you've got any questions or comments about teaching ESL overseas leave them in the comments. And stay-tuned for the last part of this series, coming in next week!