Dear Ms. Bunting,

Dear Abigail,

Please allow me a moment while I contemplate my future video franchise, “Syntax Of Steel.” Yeah, that’s me in the spandex: “And PARSE two three four five six seven eight!” Okay, I’m done now.

None of the sentences is incorrect. Often, people absorb the dictum not to split infinitives and interpret it to mean that they can’t split any kind of verb phrase, but even the split infinitive isn’t a crime against grammar nature anymore. So none of these sentences is wrong, but they all mean slightly different things because of the placement of “already.” So which one should you use? Well, if you want to say that he’s so happy about an event that’s about to take place that he’s already smiling about it, use the first, second, or fourth versions (if you use the first one, throw in a comma after “Already”). If you use the third one, italicize or emphasize the “is,” or it’s a little awkward, because the third one implies that someone has just said that he will smile or that something will make him smile, and the sentence then follows that up with, “Well, he’s smiling now.”

For the record, the second one is the one I’d prefer.

On freelancing…not that I haven’t done it. Or not that I don’t still do it. But it seems that people have just plain old forgotten that many companies actually employ full-time writers. So, okay, I have had to write about things like financial planning and substance abuse treatment. But it gives you a routinized way to hone your skill. And do it in various environments. Because as all of us writers are ALL TOO WELL aware of, it is all good and fine to be able to write a snarky opinion piece, which is fun and interesting too, but you also have to have solid skills to back that up. Very few people are as lucky as you, Sars. And freelancing is not for everyone. It just is not as glam as SJP makes it out to be on Sex and the City.

Dear Jessica,

She asked for my advice on becoming a “maybe-aspiring freelance writer.” That’s what I gave her. Full-time work is great. But it’s hard to get, too, and it can suck the life out of you in your off-time if you don’t look out, and you come home with the dry-cleaning and you just can’t face the three lines of the novel you started two months ago. I couldn’t have given her any helpful counsel on full-time work anyway, seeing as how I applied to every goddamn magazine, circular, leaflet, bulletin, PR outfit, and publishing house within a fifty-mile radius of New York City and got turned away by every single one of them — despite four years of newspaper experience in college and various prestigious assignments and internships on the outside, I didn’t have enough experience, and the editors dismissed my tone as “too sarcastic” and “not mainstream enough.”

I didn’t get here by dint of “luck,” honey. I busted my ass. I worked in bookstores and records departments. I proofread art papers and CD-ROM text and pornography and self-help books and histories of private schools in Maryland. I tended bar. And every week, I posted a column — in three and a half years of writing Tomato Nation, I’ve missed maybe ten weeks. Ten weeks, out of more than a hundred and fifty, and for many many of those weeks, nobody who didn’t have my last name gave a shit. When Mighty Big TV launched, I had to go to work in the morning to pay my bills, and then I came home and sat in my chair for twelve more hours because I had to run the site off a 16MB system with a 28.8 connection, but I couldn’t afford an upgrade for another six months, and then I had to go out and pour wine for a bunch of overfed art collectors, because I had writers to pay.

I’ve had wonderful advantages in my life, and I love my work, and in this day and age, it’s a lucky thing to do what you love. I’m grateful for that, no doubt. But it’s work. I don’t sit in my apartment eating bon-bons and tossing off quips all Dorothy Parker while my assistant fans me with a palm frond. I had to pay my dues to get here, and I had to pay them because nobody in publishing wanted to give me the time of day for three years, and I still pay them every day sitting at this desk until my ass falls asleep, praying that the market contraction doesn’t mean I have to ask for my old job back, so don’t talk to me about “lucky.” I’ve earned the right to work at home and do the work I love, because I’ve done the work.

But this is what Wannabe Sars needs to know. She needs to know that this job sucks, just like any other job can suck, but that it has rewards if you can stick it out long enough to make some headway, the same as any other job. It isn’t about luck. It’s about the work. I’ve had a fair amount of good things handed to me in my life, but my career isn’t one of those things.

Share!