The Cost of Character

For the sake of all those involved, either personal or extra personal, names of this tale must remain masked in anonymity.

At the tender age of ten, I was swept up in the desire to become a writer. I have always loved the study of english as a language. I feel a true rush of pleasure when I can hear words practially sing off a page. I can see life form from blankness. The only limit a writer has on what they can bring to life on a page, is their own imagination.

Books were my comfort when my peers rejected me from the pack. Losing myself in a world where my real problems couldn't touch me was therapeutic before I knew what therapy was, or even if I needed it (I probably do.)

So when it became clear that I would never find an employable skill I enjoyed, or that came so easily to me more than writing, I knew that's all I wanted to do.

Even after I earned my first childhood dream job of a lifeguard. I thought if I could write in my off time when I wasn't swimming and saving lives, then I could be happy all the time.

But don't we all know that happy endings are never so simple?

Well, I certainly didn't. I went to university and studied communications - I really thought that was the right way forward to getting paid to write to my heart's content. I consistently impressed professors with my skills, and while I won't pretend there wasn't a lot for me to learn in terms of formatting, style, and tone, I was regularly encouraged to publish.

I don't know why I didn't do it then. I think at the time I just made the excuse that my work wasn't ready for publishing yet. It's probably partially true. I've reread some of them, and some definitely needed more polish, but there were one or two that were ready as short stories.

I could convince myself that I was just waiting for them to be better. But the ugly side of that coin is that's all I did do: I waited.

I didn't write. I didn't work if I didn't have to.

I was twenty-three years old when I earned my Bachelor's degree. I kept saying I was ready to be a real adult; but writers' words lose their meaning when they aren't put to paper.

The ugly truth was that I was afraid to grow up, and I lost the chance to jump.

I finished my studies and looked forward to getting a chance to breathe for a moment.

Then covid hit. Pools were shut down, and I was labeled as 'inessential'.

What a shot to the kneecaps that was.

So I committed to being inessential. I let myself go. I let myself be silenced.

Then I let someone into my life who didn't belong there. I let him think he deserved me. I let him treat my affection with tolerance, and insist it was love.

Where else could I escape to, except into a world of my own creation?

I started writing again, and for the first time, it wasn't for anyone but me. I found places to post them, and while the incentive of a prize was intriguing, I never felt discouraged by losing the challenges.

Because I had found my lifeline. I began writing extensively, but most of what appeared on the pages were emotional ramblings. I'd convince myself in the beginning that writing was good therapy (by then I knew I probably needed it, but I couldn't afford it.) but by the time I had a clear head again, I'd recognize it as pointless angst.

The one nugget of gold in all that rubbish was a tragic little story of a family that was raised and died through the span of the twentieth century an Alberta farm. The story didn't see any success, but I fell in love with the characters. I shared it with some of my more critical peers, and to my sheer delight there were immediate emotional ramifications.

My brother hated the death of a certain character so much he wanted to throw my laptop. I'm glad he didn't, I couldn't afford a new one.

I don't know why, but I have always felt a fiendish delight at eliciting emotional responses from readers:

Glee, anger, bitter sadness. They're all signs that I made someone feel something. And, nine times out of ten, I get the exact emotional response that I intended. Maybe it's the influence that the Harry Potter books had on my reading choices.

Real and relatable stories mean that most of our characters don't get through unscathed, because most people don't get through life without minimal scarring.

"You're too fat to be sexy." said the fool whose insecurities I'd walked on eggshells to avoid bruising. As I reinvigorated my will to be essential for my own well-being, that was more or less the end of him. The reaction to my Alberta farm story fired me up in the direction of what I wanted to do, but then another harsh reality hit:

"You're twenty-four years old! When are you getting a real job and moving out?"

Which led me to go back to school, since no one would even hire me for so much as minimum wage with the zip experience I had. I found and graduated from a two-year program in digital cinema at a local technological institute.

I jumped back into the job search, and as it proved mostly fruitless, I began taking more serious attempts at developing the story of the Alberta farm whose family grew up with its young country. I made so many promising starts that ended in a lurch when the story felt too vast to encompass into one book.

Then I found true love. Honest to God, true love, complete with vulnerability and sharing life goals. In a wine-infused late night discussion, he asked me in plain curiosity if the Alberta story I was explaining to him in a passionate tangent was intended as a franchise.

The fact that I hadn't considered that I could split up the plot into three books before hit me like lightning. I exploded with excited inspiration so hard that I hit my arm on the side of the chair. The next morning I had a bruise on my arm, and a list of ideas in my notes app.

The goal was suddenly attainable, but I still had a problem:

I had two jobs already, both part time, and not paying nearly enough to balance out financially.

Which brings me to a moral dilemma. I have a job now, as a ghostwriter, for a company I won't name. The pay offered on the job board was already peanuts, but it was enough to clear away school debts. I bit my tongue upon learning that the subject matter was by no means appealing to self-respecting women. I respected the request of their gridlocked style preferences.

But the prize is hardly worth the gruel. The pay doesn't cover editing time, or reviewing of style guides, and it grates on my morality. The editors rake on what's left of my dignity. The 'author' whose name my work will bear when it is ready to publish does not talk to me like I am a person.

I'm left asking myself questions:

How much of my dignity do I sacrifice for sake of a paycheque, however meagre it may be, when I have scraped the bottom of the job search barrel to find this one?

At what point I do I become justified in deciding that this person does not deserve my best effort?

If I throw the disrespect back in their face, do I throw myself into further into an unstable future, when I finally have a bright one on the horizon?

Are my morals, my efforts, and my capabilities truly worth less than the cost of living?

I know the answer to the last one; and I know what I have to do about it.

I've faced too many setbacks not to earn my happy ending. I will get there with my own thoughts, with my own words, and under my own name - not at the cost of my character.