Button Tapper

New bio photo; you like?

Since I’ve recently moved house, and have been experiencing a shift in my writing priorities along with my new geographical location, I decided to update my bio page. Take a look and see what you think. Comments and suggestions are always welcome!

Also, my apologies to any of my Facebook friends who have recently been getting friend requests from me at a new account. I had originally thought it would be easier to start a fresh “Austin” account so as to join that network and make new friends in town on a clean slate, but after going through the trouble of setting up the account, I discovered that FB has abolished the regional networks. Since that was pretty much the only point of having a secondary account (not to mention the hassles relating to re-friending people from Montreal, re-blocking the blocked peeps from the old account, explaining what the dilly-yo was going on, and having technical glitches with Twitter apps and so forth), I ultimately nuked the new account and just edited the old account to suit my new address. Sorry about the confusion, kids, but I was just as confused! And for the record, I don’t hate you Montrealers; I just don’t really want to get spam from the hipsters in town about their must-attend Wolf-band sideburn-growing events anymore. Y’know?

In conclusion: technology is a pain in the butt that must be dealt with harshly at times, usually by brute force and hours of swearing at the computer. If I haven’t told you I love you lately, know that I do. And that you are pretty and smart and not at all soporific. (I’m studying vocab for the GRE. Soporific was on the SAT. I remember laughing at it then, the same way I laugh at it now, an old friend in my altogether distinguished lexicon.)

I’ve been in Austin for a few weeks now, and I haven’t seen a single armadillo.

Weirdest. Animal. Ever. (image via Wikipedia)

When I first arrived in town, I started seeing tons of armadillo paraphernalia. It seems the city’s unofficial mascot is the peculiar looking armor-plated vegetarian (which undoubtedly help keep the weird-quotient high in Austin), and while friends have pointed out that we’ve seen plenty squashed along the side of the road, I am still searching for a real, live specimen.

I’ve seen plenty of drawings, figurines, and there was even an armadillo-themed Christmas display downtown near the Book People, but I’m hankering for an armadillo in the flesh. Or… whatever it is they’ve got there. Hides?

I’ve seen deer almost daily, out in the yard, but armadillos? Zip. Zero. Zilch. Nada. For a town that’s planning an Armadillo Christmas Bazaar, I’m wondering what’s up with the armadillo sitch. Are they in hiding? Do they only come out at night? Are they hibernating? Seriously, dudes, where are all the armadillos at?!

I feel like I’m waiting for Godot, except in this case Godot is a weird placental mammal. Samuel Beckett save us all.

Apparently it’s easy for even the most talentless hacks to get their books published at real live publishing houses these days, as I discovered when writing my latest review for Quill & Quire. I just finished reading one of the worst erotic (and I use the term loosely) novels I’ve ever seen. Clearly, I should be cashing in on this market, where women (because no man would ever read such trash) will eagerly toss their money at just about anything.

I should write an erotic romance!

Especially because I’m still young and hot. Have you ever noticed that although the cover ladies are hot and firm young thangs, the accompanying author photos are often a study in contrasts? I mean, I don’t want to name any names here, but just pick up a romance novel and flip to the back and you’ll see what I mean. Yipes!

I guess I shouldn’t be dissing these ladies’ looks, but it’s just become a total stereotype for me when I see their bio photos. They’re clearly the frustrated, bored housewives of the world. They probably write erotica because their husbands don’t satisfy them in bed. And they write really bad erotica because they don’t know what it’s like to get properly fucked.

Either that or they’re just bad writers in general. But even the worst writer who’s had experience with his or her chosen subject should be able to avoid obvious clichés and the overuse of the phrase “fast and furious.”

Anyway, stay tuned to read my review in an upcoming issue of Q&Q. I fully expect to receive hate mail from all parties involved, and hopefully a few editors saying, “Oh yeah? You think you could do better? Here’s a book deal. PROVE IT, ASSHOLE!”

I realize there’s next to no money in writing erotica, as I run an erotica website myself and make no money off of this project, but this is simply ridiculous. Here’s a copy of an email I just sent to Ellora’s Cave Publishing’s Editor-in-Chief, Kelli Collins, upon reading this unbelievable “job posting,” and its insultingly low payment.

Dear Ms. Collins,

I recently saw your ad on JournalismJobs.com in search of copy and content editors, but I believe there must be a typo in your posting. Does your company really only pay $0.0075 cents per word (i.e. less than 1 cent per word) for content editing, and $0.00175 per word for copy editing? This seems unbelievable, as you say the typical project is a minimum of 10,000 words, which by my account works out to a pay scale of $75 per book edited, content-wise, or $17.50 per book for copy editing.

Are you aware that this payscale is far below industry standards? According to Writers.ca, the website of the Professional Writers Association of Canada (PWAC), the average payment for editing is between $500 and $20,000 per project, or $30 to $60 per hour. These are figures that have not changed substantially over the past 30 years, and I would certainly hope that rates for professional editing would not have dropped so significantly!

Please let me know if these are, in fact, your rates for editing work, or if there has been some mistake, as I would certainly like to know why “the premier publisher of erotic romance novels” cannot, seemingly, offer their freelance editors a more competitive wage.

Sincerely,
Laura Roberts
–
Writer, editor, button tapper

http://buttontapper.com

If you’re going to pay people for their work, you should pay them at least the minimum by industry standards. If kids flipping burgers are guaranteed a minimum wage, then why shouldn’t writers and editors receive equally fair treatment? Ads like this make me mad, not just because it’s all about quantity over quality, but also because it shows just how little the person offering the job will respect the person who does the job. I don’t expect respect, but I do expect to be treated like a human being, rather than a wage slave. If I wanted that, I’d go take some office job pushing papers in a cubicle, à la Office Space.

What do you think?

“I hate my job, and I don’t think I’m gonna go anymore.”
“Are you going to quit?”
“Nah, I’m just not gonna go anymore”
—Office Space

I don’t know what to write anymore. For the most part, I’m frustrated with my current employers, who either give me terrible assignments, pay me less than I’m worth, or just straight up don’t respect the work that I do for them. (Except you, Quill & Quire; you are the only employer I actually like. Wanna go steady?)

On the one hand, I feel like I shouldn’t complain, because being freelance means that even when my assignments suck and I make shit money, at least I’m my own boss and get to set my own rules about when and where—and what—I will write. I like that part of my job a whole lot, and I’m not sure I could ever deal with doing a “real” job again.

But on the other hand, yes, goddamn it, I am dissatisfied! I hate making shit money, I hate getting all the worst assignments, and I hate feeling like I am just wasting my time doing busy work rather than making some kind of difference in the world. I like to learn new things, to talk to interesting people, to write things that matter—even if those things ultimately only matter to me. Currently, most of my employers don’t do diddly-squat in the way of helping me to learn or to grow as a person. They certainly don’t care about nurturing my soul, and they aren’t doing nearly enough in terms of nurturing my physical self, with respect to fair wages that pay my (very freakin’ minimal) bills.

So I’m fed up, and I’m not sure what to say about it, because I feel like freelancers aren’t supposed to bite the hands that feed them, no matter how many times those hands also slap them in the face. I keep writing and erasing notes to my bosses–the ones that keep on asking for more and more, while giving me less and less. I keep wanting to call bullshit, to stand up for myself. Because, honestly, who else will? And yet every time I tell my husband when I’m doing, he tells me not to burn my bridges.

But I ask you: If I’m on a bridge to nowhere, what does it matter?