Impoverished Writers

By Bruce Firestone | Uncategorized

Jan 02

Guest post by screenwriter
Sharon Buckingham, best known as writer/producer and creative force behind
Sticks & Stones, a CTV made-for-TV movie. Sharon, originally from LA,
currently resides in Ottawa, Canada.

Corollary: Why Mortgage Brokers Can Improve
the Human Condition

Thanks
for getting us together yesterday*, Prof Bruce. What a terrific bunch! I’m
already looking forward to a roundtable discussion about publishing.

I
read the letters of John Cheever a few years ago. He was another great writer,
his work is still taught in university courses all over the world, he had many
novels published, he’d been in the New Yorker, won a Pulitzer Prize as well as
a National Medal for Literature plus the National Book Award, etc etc.

John Cheever, the Chekhov of the Suburbs

One
letter of his nearly brought me to tears. He was writing a friend. He said it
was the first time he’d felt in a position to buy a home but the bank didn’t
consider him a qualified borrower and he needed someone to co-sign a mortgage
loan. He said it shamed him to have to ask for this help. He was 61 years old.

Another
story to add to the collection of impoverished writers and artists.

[Franz Kafka, frustrated with
his living quarters and day job, wrote in a letter to Felice Bauer in 1912,
“time is short, my strength is limited, the office is a horror, the apartment
is noisy, and if a pleasant, straightforward life is not possible then one must
try to wriggle through by subtle maneuvers.” From Daily Rituals: How Artists
Work, Mason Currey, Alfred A. Knopf, 2013.]

But there are others. Kathryn
Stockett who wrote “The Help” was turned down by fifty (yes, 50) agents, some
of whom told her the book would never, ever find
a publisher. And then agent 51 took her on and sold the book in three weeks.
And of course we all know that the first Harry Potter book was rejected by
sixteen or seventeen publishers before finding a home. Those are the stories I
tell myself and those who attend my workshops, but then I’m a cockeyed optimist
so…

[Anthony Trollope demanded of
himself three thousand words each morning (250 words every fifteen minutes for
three hours) before going off to his job at the postal service, which he kept
for 33 years during the writing of more than two dozen books. A not so subtle
maneuver… From Daily Rituals: How Artists Work, Mason Currey, Alfred A. Knopf,
2013.]

Thanks
again,

Sharon
Buckingham

* Sharon is referring to our AA (!) group,
Authors’ Anonymous.https://authorsandfriends.eventbrite.com/

More from Sharon: Can
You Create Successful TV Programming from a Home Base in Ottawa? https://www.eqjournal.org/?p=3144

Postscript:
It’s a pity that John didn’t know a good mortgage broker. There are many
reasons why almost 70% of all mortgages in the US
(and a growing percentage in Canada)
are sourced by the mortgage broker industry and not Banks. Canadian Banks and
most American ones only like to lend money to people who don’t need it.

Here is a reading that may help: Why
Use Mortgage Brokers?https://www.eqjournal.org/?p=34

Disclosure:
As a licensed REALTOR and Broker (as well as an impoverished author), I refer
almost all my clients to mortgage brokers.

@Quantum_Entity
@ProfBruce

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About the Author

Bruce is an entrepreneur/real estate broker/developer/coach/urban guru/keynote speaker/Sens founder/novelist/columnist/peerless husband/dad.

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