Anyone who has ever been job hunting knows how companies love to boast about their benefits packages. This is their way of appealing to potential candidates and maintaining a competitive edge in the market. It has recently come to my attention though that I’ve never heard of any kind of benefits program for employment as an author, and yet, being a writer has some of the best benefits ever! Thus, I have taken it upon myself to divulge the benefits of being a novelist here.
As an author, your benefits include, but are by no means limited to:
1. Direct Deposit. You simply open a PayPal account, and money mysteriously appears!
2. You can get to work at whatever time you want. As a writer, there’s no one waiting for you, looking pointedly at the clock when you arrive at your computer to write for the day…even if you don’t show up till noon.
3. You can go to work in your pajamas. Perhaps the greatest benefit of all! You can roll out of bed, get some coffee, and go to work looking like absolute hell, and no one cares.
4. It’s up to you whether or not you can have food or drink at your work station. If you’re in the middle of an especially intense writing session when you’re suddenly struck by a craving for a pot roast and a Slurpee from 7-11, it’s perfectly fine, as long as you say it’s okay.
5. You can pee without having to explain yourself to anyone. Oh, yeah…I said it. We’ve all had those jobs where urinating is not treated as the natural function it is, but rather as a stick in the ever-spinning spokes of the machine that was our “jobs.” As an author, if you need to pee, then pee. Really, no one will even have to know.
6. You can drink on the job. For those of you with a weakness for the drink (and we know who you are), you may feel inclined to get hammered at your desk. So long as your deadlines are met, no one cares if you’ve got a pint, a fifth or even an Opium hookah in your top drawer. Hey, Hemingway did it… as did Poe… and King… and…
7. Your boss wants you to succeed. As an author, you have two bosses: your publisher and your audience. Neither of these guys want you to write crappy books. In fact, they want you to excel at your job and both are wonderful at supporting you. Your publisher is not going to feel threatened by you and fire you if you end up writing a better book than him or her, and your audience is not going to call you a suck-up because your book hit the New York Times bestseller list.
8. If you get tired of your office, you can leave. There are no rules about where your job is done, so long as it’s done. If you feel like packing up your computer and writing a few scenes in the corner bar, no one is going to question your whereabouts. Unless you happen to be on house arrest.
9. There are no tattling co-workers. As a writer, if you feel like playing on Facebook at work, there’s no one to tattle on you for it. Angry Birds, Vampire Wars, Soduku, hell, even Pac-Man if that’s your thing. Again… no one cares. As an added plus to this particular benefit, you can lock yourself into a room, rearrange the furniture in your YoVille character’s apartment, and emerge several hours (or days) later looking exhausted, and claiming to have written an especially taxing series of scenes. No one’s going to question you. Unless you have a pet or child you’ve neglected to water and feed.
10. Sexual harassment is perfectly okay in the workplace. Need I say more?
11. You never have to call in sick. Don’t feel like writing today? No biggie. As a writer, you will never have to wake up, decide you just can’t do it today, and, using your weakest, scratchiest voice, call some a**hole and explain your medical history to them only to spend the rest of the day feeling guilty and wishing you’d just gone in after all.
12. There are no pesky safety programs. If, as a writer, you happen to see a two-by-four with a rusty nail sticking out of it in your work place, who cares? If some dumb ass is stupid enough to step on the damn thing, they probably deserve the pain, right?
13. Research is a tax write-off. Let’s say I’m writing a novel about a stripper with a crack-cocaine problem. Common sense tells me I need to understand the ins and outs of the life of said stripper in order to write an effective story about her. My time spent at the girly shows? Just part of my job, ma’am… and hence, a tax write-off! I’m not sure I’d be able to write off the crack-cocaine I’d need to experiment with in order to believably portray the drug’s effects on the human body, but hey, it’s worth a shot.
14. You never have to feign interest in your co-workers personal lives ever again. We’ve all been there. “Yes, Sally, I love the baby blanket you knitted for your grandson…”
As you can see, there are many benefits to being a writer, and it’s no wonder it’s such a sought-after profession. It’s just sad that they don’t advertise their benefits program a little more.
jsascribes 