Money is such an unfortunate thing, is it not? Maybe not the thing itself, but its ubiquitous need. Food, shelter, clothing; all of our needs are gated behind pale-green gates. To access the relief to these needs, we are called upon to offer up our precious time upon an altar in exchange for vital credit.
What matters money to a writer? Pen and paper are not great expenses, are they? A computer or tablet to enshrine our words into isn't such an expense either, all things considered. So what does money, freely given by a populous support, patrons of the arts, actually afford the writer?
Money offers us time. Time is the single most precious resource to the storyteller. Time to craft. Time to wonder. Time to embrace dreams and sew them together into meaningful wholes. Time to jot them down. Time to edit it all together to make it seem like we know what we're doing. A writer must steal and pilfer time away from that altar to make their imaginings cohesive and beautiful. A writer, perhaps more so than any other artist, needs their time. More time, often, than that evil altar leaves us with.
I value my time dearly. Sure, true enough, at a cursory look, most of it I fap away reading, or playing games, or watching movies, listening to music, or drinking at a bar. It is difficult to detail how much of those idle hours are spent greasing the gears or filling the silo with scenes and echoes and emotions which later will distill into songs of glory and heartbreak and joy and despair. That is the way of it, for me, at least. I need time, inspiration, and independence to properly tend and fertilize the garden of my stories, great and small, to grow.
I live a lean life. No children. No car. A small apartment at a slim price. I work four months per year, as little as I can get away with, as a middle grade teacher. I'm pretty okay at it. I don't hate the labour. And it even tangents storytelling in its way. But it is not the same as writing a book. It is not the same as weaving a poem to life. For doing that, I need time.
For the past decade, I have written one book per year. The first draft usually takes me three months of full-time writing, 2'000 words quota per day. Then comes editing, pass after pass, intermittently, by myself and confidants. Second, third, fourth, and ever onward passes until I finally feel confident in the labour. Between writing, editing, and labouring to catch the attention of magpie agents, the prickling in my fingers and the whistling at the back of my mind conspire to make me write short stories. And poetry. A few per year, perhaps three to five poems and as many short stories. This production I can maintain with time, the time I've denied our sacrificial altar, our great civilized machine.
With more time, I could write more. With more time, I could do more. With more time kept from our sacrificial altar, I may just have enough life in me to tell all my stories. As it stands, I doubt it.
This is what you do when you toss me your coin. Your hard-earned, life-vital, essential, coin. You buy me time. You buy me time with yours. It feels like heresy to imagine. Why is my time so much more sacred than yours? So sacred that you would give up a shred of thine just to feed me my liberty? A disgusting arrogance, it tastes like to me...
But if my words, my stories, my verses, or even my rantings, touch you, reach you, feed you something in turn, then maybe I have given you something also? I like to hope I can. I like to hope that I do. Not to make more time for myself. That is already spent, stolen from our altars, and happily so. But maybe, oh how I hope, I will have made your time a little more valuable. Added just a sliver more gilt to its edges. Made your time, your precious and invaluable time, just a little more radiant.
That would be enough. That is enough. And I hope to do so, more of it, with every shred of time I can steal and preserve away from the machine.