Writers and Money

I am back from the American Academy of Religion meeting in Montreal, of which more later, where I also collected a freelance-editing check that I was owed.

When I collected nine days’ worth of mail at the post office, I was happy to see that another check that was “in the mail” was in fact in the mail.

It’s not always that way, as SF writer John Scalzi makes clear in this blog post about writers and money.

3. Writer pay is generally low and generally inconsistent. And if one writes fiction for some/all of one’s writing output, especially so. I’ve written in detail about writing rates and payment before so it’s not necessary to go into detail again right at the moment. But what it means is that if one is a writer, one does a fair amount of work for not a whole lot of money, and then has to wait for that payment to arrive more or less at the pleasure of the person sending the check. Unfortunately, writers like pretty much everyone else have fixed expenses (mortgage/rent, bills etc), and those people generally do not wait to be paid at the pleasure of the writer; you pay your electric bill regularly or you don’t get electricity.

I am reminded of a writer friend’s favorite line: “My retirement plan is a family history of early heart attacks.”

So far, however, he has outlived his father.

The only worse idea than writing is getting a PhD in Pagan studies. At least a couple of times a month I hear from someone who wants to do that and who wants advice on which graduate school to choose.

It’s cheaper to go to the tattoo shop and have them tattoo “Unemployable in Academia” somewhere on your body.

In US Air Force, Wiccans Outnumber Muslims

A friend passed on this column by political commenter Diana West, who notes in passing that there are almost as many Wiccans as Muslims in the American military–and more in the Air Force.

So far, I have not heard of any Wiccan dissatisfied with their military careers expressing themselves by killing their fellow service members.

Let’s hope it never happens.

Montréal Magical Mercantile Tour


A group of Pagan Studies scholars started Friday at the big John Waterhouse exhibit at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. It offered the largest selection of his paintings ever, plus sketches, drawings, and letters. When the docent suggested that “The Magic Circle” was not really about religion, she was quickly corrected. Poor, well-meaning, volunteer docent!

Then off to the first magical establishment, where we also got a presentation on the work of the Montréal Pagan Resource Centre.

And what’s this? Another Waterhouse painting on a book cover! Extra points if you know which of his paintings has served as cover art for which book.

The shop cat stood guard while someone behind the curtain received a Tarot card reading.

Elsewhere, the price of gri-gri was $9.95 per sachet.

The door to the basement temple promised mysteries underground.

The Writing Life Pulls Off the Siding onto the Main Line

I think of it as my secret Chicago hideout: the “you have to know where to look” Metropolitan Lounge in Chicago’s Union Station. I’m not in town enough to justify a membership in the University Club, even if their building does look like Batman should be perched on the parapet. (The main clause there was a joke, readers.)

I’ve started mapping out what might be the next book after Her Hidden Children: The Rise of Wicca And Paganism in America. For two years, I have been trying to get started on a different project, accumulating stacks of research material, but writing only lightweight paper on the topic.

Maybe, to keep the railroad metaphor going, I was on the wrong track. (Wait, no, that is probably an animal-tracking metaphor.)  Now I feel a lot more energized, ready to kick some proposals around when I arrive at the American Academy of Religion meeting.

If it goes, I will post some appeals for particular, specialized information here as a form of “crowd-sourcing.”

It feels good to have some direction again.

‘True Samhain’ is Friday

Now that the costumes are put away, note that Samhain calculated astrologically (Sun at 15 degrees of Scorpio) falls on Saturday, Nov. 6, at 6:42 a.m. Greenwich time, which would be roughly midnight on Friday here in the Mountain Time Zone.

Last year Peg and I had a little blog-discussion of the two dates.

Scott Monahan’s archaeoastronomy page lets you calculate to the minute.

Check his “In the Movies” link for archaeoastronomical critiques, such as this one of National Treasure.

Organizing Halloween Ritual

I said that I was not going to post any more Halloween items. I take that back. Here is one more.

One decision we’ve made is to rebuff curious friends who ask to join our Halloween rituals. It seems like half the people I know want to be pagan on Halloween. I have no problem with a little religious tourism. I’m a bit of a spiritual slut. I have never turned down an invitation to a Seder. Bach thundering through a church transports me. But when I see visions of bacchanals dancing in my nonpagan friends’ heads, I get a little testy. Certain experiences are too comforting, too sacred to be spectacles. For me, Samhain is one of them.

This is what happens when the news media notice you only one week a year.

Free-Range Kids Have a ‘Scary’ Halloween

One last Halloween post, and then I’ll shut up.

Lenore Skenazy, author of Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry speaks truth to power and rejects the nanny state on October 31.

If you want to see something really scary on Halloween, come to my apartment around 9 p.m.I’m letting my kids eat unwrapped candy.

They can eat any homemade goodies they get, too, and that unholy of unholies: candy where the wrapper is slightly torn. And on the very off chance they get an apple, they can gnaw it to the core, so long as there’s not a razor-sized, dripping gash on the side.

There is more. Read the whole thing.

Contemporary Pagan Studies in the New York Times

The upcoming sessions of the Contemporary Pagan Studies Group at the American Academy of Religion’s annual meeting are mentioned in the New York Times.

Some of us have been joking about “the I-word” (idolatry). I wondered if that would catch some journalist’s interest.

How to Celebrate a Christian Halloween

Writing at First Things, an “interreligious” journal (“inter” as in Catholics and Protestants, maybe), Sally Thomas faces that annual hurdle of the Christian parent: What To Do About Halloween.

How can it be fun and still be doctrinally acceptable? She writes,

Halloween’s emphasis on darkness makes many Christians squeamish, but, to my mind, what my friend observed about the medieval feel of Halloween is more on the money.

I don’t especially encourage my children to dress as scary things for Halloween. We are taught, rightly, to avoid flirting with the occult, and the darkest character any child of mine has ever wanted to be is Darth Vader.

Don’t you love that “flirting”? It’s right up there with “dabbling,” as in “dabbling with witchcraft.”

Ducks dabble. Witches … do other things. But, who knows, maybe “the occult” will kick things up a notch and kiss them back, slip them a little tongue. That Darth Vader costume might be the first step into experiential religion. You never know.

On All Saints’ Day, our parish holds a children’s festival, hugely attended, at which children and adults alike dress as their favorite saints. This year mine will be St. Ursula, St. Walburga, St. Gerard Majella, and St. George. I probably will reprise my last year’s appearance as St. Helena, although the True Cross did keep whacking people every time I turned around.

Watch out for the boy who wants to be St. Sebastian: he’s probably gay.

Via Rod Dreher at BeliefNet, where the commenters actually display a wide variety of opinions about the celebration.

There is always the issue of sex with demons to consider as well.

Fate Magazine Reanimated

When pre-writing the blog post on dining above the dead (something best done while walking the dogs), I was thinking about how it was perfect for Fate magazine.

Digression 1: Dog-walking is not all that meditative, because Something Always Happens, like this morning when they charged off through nine-inch-deep snow to try to catch some wild turkeys.

Digression 2: If the reporter were on the ball, she would re-write her story for Fate or another magazine. Get paid twice for the same work—that is the secret of freelancing.

So it occurred to me, crossing the gully between the county road and my house on Tuesday night pre-bed dog walk, that I had not seen a copy of Fate since last spring. Had it been sucked into the magazine death pool?

I checked the Web site, however, and it promised a new issue soon.

Editor-in-chief Phyllis Galde tells me, “The July/Aug is at the printer, and we will turn around immediately and get the Sept./Oct. one printed.”

She promises an “awesome” new Web site but complained that the Web designer and the printing plant crew were all sick with the flu.

So Fate is reanimated, I hope. I miss it. Where else can you get a good ghost story?

The graphic has nothing to do with the magazine. Just some Halloween cheer. You can get it on a T-shirt.