the-fu.com: Desert of the Reality of Being a Writer and a Teacher

Desert of the Reality of Being a Writer and a Teacher

Opportunity. I’m looking for it. Actively seeking it. If I were to place a personal ad for it, it would read something like this: Recent MA in English seeking part- to full-time employment. 5 years’ teaching experience. 10 years’ journalism experience. Need writing/editing? Will gladly comply. Would rather not work for blood-sucking evil corporate empires but will consider working for The Man if said Man provides health insurance.

Currently, I feel closed in on all sides; all figurative doors that lead to opportunities are swollen shut. I quit teaching high school to go to graduate school. I wanted to teach at the college level instead of the secondary level. I thought that studying literature would enhance my own writing. After I finished my MA, I was going to continue on this academic trail. I wanted to have little acronyms attached to my name: Dr. Holub. Annie Holub, PhD. I wanted to be the first person in my family with a PhD. I sent out applications, nine of them, and received back nine letters that in more words than needed said, “On you, we will pass.” Door swollen shut.

So I continue studying for my MA exams, trying not to dwell on the fact that an MA in English is for most schools the “dropout degree”, i.e. what they give PhD students who leave after their exams. I pause between chapters and books to search Craigslist, Career Builder, Monster, Idealist.org, my University’s employment listings… I search everywhere, anywhere, using keywords “editing”, “writing”, “education” - but the jobs that require Master’s degrees almost always require them in fields other than English. And the jobs I am qualified for only want candidates with a BA. I could easily return to teaching high school English. When I left the high school level, I vowed to never return - but glance back I’ve done and each time, what I glimpse makes my palms sweat and my stomach turn. The few charter schools who manage to create an educational environment that is not anathema to human existence are not hiring this year.

So I continue my searches. Career Builder, the engine that powers online classifieds for the two local daily newspapers here in Tucson, Arizona, does not even have what I do as an option in their drop down menu. This I find ominous and indicative of a larger problem: Opportunity for writers is weak in this desert town. It’s dehydrated and holed up in a pit six feet below ground, hiding from the sun.

My MA exams come and go. I pass, amazingly. The graduate program assistant emails me and asks which school I’ll be attending in the fall. I hit “reply” and type, “the school of hard knocks.” Everyone asks why I don’t just stay in the program I’m in, continue on and get my PhD here? But I got my undergraduate degree here, got my post-baccalaureate teaching certification here, got my Master’s here and all the while, tuition increases and I have watched the campus gentrify overnight. In the eleven years since I first started school here, buildings have been torn down, rebuilt, renamed: my inner map is worn down, filled with erasures, revisions, memories overlaying memories, years thick. My student loans for the one year I spent getting certified to teach are more than all of my undergraduate loans combined. I have outstayed my welcome at this university.

But as I progress further and further away from the original plan, something strange starts happening. The pitches I sent out every once in a while to other magazines and online publications, begin to get positive replies. And then I remember something. All this school stuff, all of this reading, was begun for one reason: to help me become a better writer. That was the original original goal. That’s what my plan was. But in following them, I lost sight of them. Small doors begin to open as big ones swell shut.

So, OK. F--k graduate school. F--k them and their esoteric admissions requirements. I can write stories and novels and articles without a PhD. I can still teach writing at the college level. And yet. The small doors that are opening do not open up to income. A fellow contributor to the alt. Weekly I write for maintains that no writer should ever write for free (advice I am currently not adhering to--- a writer’s gotta write!). Writing is a profession, after all--- to do it well, you need experience, skills, and immense amounts of practice--- and writing for free only makes things worse. Writers still need health insurance and a stable paycheck. No one would ask a doctor to work for free all of the time. Career Builder’s lack of categorical legitimization of my advanced skills in writing and editing, is indeed indicative of a larger problem. You want to write, and get paid for it and not work in an ad agency? “HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA,” says the larger machinery of capitalism. You want to write for money, you do it in the name of corporate sublimation. You do it for Citibank, pharmaceutical companies, or The Navy. You want to teach writing, you do it for pennies we throw at you in the breeze. The president of my University makes over $400,000 a year but if you teach the students to write, if you teach the only class all incoming freshman are required to take, you have little to no job security and you have to buy your own health insurance.

The job applications and resumes I’ve sent out are grasping for whatever threads of employment they see glimmering the breeze but these threads glimmer and then are gone, blown away by the hot, dusty desert air. I expand my search out to include other cities, states, places. Plenty of jobs in New York. But moving to New York is out of the question. Plenty of jobs in Chicago. Moving to Chicago is also out of the question. Economic forces are real: they are invisible but strong: I cannot sell my house in the current housing market and afford to move elsewhere. Maybe I can next year, or the year after. But what I need right now is a job where I am, something that will allow me to make the payments on my previous student loans that kick back into repayment mode on June 1.

Unlike most of my friends, I am doing what I love. It doesn’t seem right that doing what I love is antithetical to the idea of a career, to financial stability, to quality of life. I am not sure what can change to allow more writers to do what they do best--- write--- but the demise of more and more print publications (RIP Harp and No Depression and Book Critics Circle) and pay being cut at reputable publications for writers like Publishers Weekly, does not seem very hopeful. Sure, everyone wants to read things online for free. But everyone also needs to remember that someone wrote what they’re reading. Someone spent hours on the phone, hours transcribing interviews, hours listening, thinking, and then hours writing, revising, editing. We as a culture need to value our writers more. What would happen if no one wrote anything for a day? For even half a day? What if all of the writers in the world created a virtual desert, with empty pages, no content, just endless white space--- where would the information age be then?

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