Embrace your inner bitchiness
OK, stop already with the "how can I do what you're doing?" emails.
I agree, I have the ideal life: freelance writer toting my sleeky-sleeky G4 iBook from Rockford Coffee to R-X streamside or barn loft to martini-fab leather chair to rimside at the Green River confluence to the historic Concord, Mass., library to Fisherman's Rock in our own Little Pond Cove in Rhode Island.
But what the hell am I writing when I self-righteously perch myself upon a tide-swept rock or a historically significant ballustrade? Um, well, a lotta stuff --SHUT UP! -- like marketing and advertising brilliance that will change the course of America or at least the buying habits of some teeny portion of a specific cadre of lefthanded fanciers of post-WWII lighting fixtures.
The sorry truth is, everyone's a writer. I'm just lucky enough to get to be paid for it when I'm in Alaska or Sao Paulo or Pienza or Prague.
And geez, don't I know that my livelihood rests on that razor's edge every day, you know, if everyone just spoke the truth and got their typing fingers in sync with their hearts, hell, I'd have no job. Spelling helps, sure, but that's minor because that's what dictionaries and spellcheckers are for.
So how can you do what I do? BELIEVE it.
And then bring a raincoat, a stupid hat, sunscreen and a lotta bug repellent. When others query you, roll your eyes and click your iPod over to OVAL.