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Even though I'm still not on speaking terms with religion, I relocated my faith
through the process of writing that book ... and just in time.
Halfway through the book, my kids told me that my ex-husband (their biological
father) was molesting them when they were at his house. We called in the police and
Social Services immediately. I kept writing because I had to. A couple weeks after I
finished the book, my parents walked out of my life. The week after that, my nine-
year-old was hospitalized for symptoms of acute depression. While he was
hospitalized, we moved out of the town where I'd lived for fifteen years and started
trying to sell my house. The next month my daughter was hit by a car (both kids are
fine now, by the way). The following month my second marriage started to fall apart.
That same month we bought another house to replace the one we'd had to sell, and
went deep into debt. Five months after that, the second marriage fell completely apart
and I had to pack up the kids and move again, and I lost everything I owned.
And all of this might sound terrible, but in fact the things that happened were
necessary  and underneath the pain and the suffering, they were good. At first I
looked at those months as a curse  I wrote Sympathy for the Devil, got back on
speaking terms with God, and God exploded my tranquil life. In fact, though it took
me time to see this, my life was already poisoned under the surface, and the explosion
that followed the writing of the book and the changes that wrought in me blew open
the terrible lies that were destroying my children and me and endangering our lives.
HOLLY LISLE
MUGGING THE MUSE: WRITING FICTION FOR LOVE AND MONEY 117
The explosion removed a lot of people I loved from my life, but those it left were the
ones who loved me, too. It made my kids and me stronger, brought us together, made
it possible for us to be honest with each other in a way many parents and children
never find.
And what did that have to do with writing? I don't know that I could have survived
the two terrible years that followed the revelations of August 7th, 1994, if I had not
found my faith. I could not have found my faith without my writing. I had forgotten
that things happen for a reason; that life has both meaning and purpose; that we
always have the choice to use the events of our life for our own good; that we become
stronger not when times are easy, but when they are hard. I remembered these things
because I was writing them, and finally I felt the truth of them.
Writing fiction is a fire that burns inside of you, and burns you from the inside out. It
sears away the lies you tell yourself, it sears away the masks you hide behind, and in
the end it refines you the way fire refines gold. What you put into your writing you
get back a hundred-fold. Your characters teach you how to live, how to love,
sometimes how to say goodbye.
When you write honestly, you give a gift to yourself that will change your life for the
better.
HOLLY LISLE
MUGGING THE MUSE: WRITING FICTION FOR LOVE AND MONEY 118
How to Quit Your Day Job to Write Full Time
There aren't many things that go without saying in writing; one of the few is that most
people who write at all dream about writing full-time without the hassle of a day job,
too.
First let me tell you that if you're looking for something you can do to walk away
from the job tomorrow, I don't have the answer for you. It took me about eight years
from the time I decided that I wanted to leave nursing to write full-time to the day in
November of 1993 when I was able to give away my stethescope and do it. And even
then I did it wrong, and jumped too soon, and cost myself some momentum and some
money.
However, if I knew that by staying in nursing for another five years, I could have had
an easier time now ... I think I still would have jumped when I did. Writing full-time
is as cool as you might ever hope it would be on the good days, and scarier than you
can believe on the bad ones, and I wouldn't trade any of the rollercoaster ride that it
has been up to now for the security a few more years in the day job could have given
me.
First things first. If you are wedded to the idea of security and you like knowing that
you're going to be able to pay your bills on time every month, kiss the idea of full-
time writing a permanent goodbye. At levels of success higher than those I've yet
reached, I imagine money is a bit more secure. At my level  which is fourteen or so
books in print, all in a solid genre that generates a good audience, no single title
breathtakingly successful, but several that have earned out and pay regular if small
royalties  it is an adventure. And remember that the definition of adventure is  some
HOLLY LISLE
MUGGING THE MUSE: WRITING FICTION FOR LOVE AND MONEY 119
poor shmuck having a hell of a hard time of it a thousand miles away. I'm doing
what I love, and getting paid for it, and I wouldn't do anything else unless I were in
imminent danger of starvation. Life doesn't suck. But I'm one of those people who
never minded a bit of adventure. And even for me, sometimes the sheer amount of
adventure makes the whole thing dicey.
So how do you go about telling the boss and the 9-5 grind goodbye forever? Read on
...
" Dealing With Money
The first reality of writing full time is that money is always tricky. You have it in
large chunks, then you don't have it at all. You can't count on a check every week, or
every month, or even every six months. It comes when it comes, and you have to
figure out how to make it last until it comes again, even though you never know when
that will be. Here's how you do it.
1. Put aside more money than you could possibly need before you leave. Figure out
what it takes you to survive for a year, and add about ten to fifteen percent for things
that go boom. Things always go boom, and they do it with a real passion when you
don't have a regular paycheck.
2. Brace yourself for the taxes. They suck. You pay the regular amount on your
income for whatever bracket you're in, plus you pay self-employment tax. Take a
look at your paystub from your last paycheck. Note the amount that's currently going
into Social Security or FICA. Double it. If you maintain the same level of income,
that's what you're going to be paying, because you don't have an employer who takes
half the bite for you anymore. Self-employment tax will add several thousand dollars
annually to your tax burden even if you only manage a moderate income. Also
remember that once you're out on your own, nobody takes the money out of your
check for you every week. You do it yourself, quarterly, and I'll tell you right now [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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