You take the job, do the job, and move on. That’s how things work. You can’t get invested beyond that, because attachments make you sloppy. You start to take a stake in things that aren’t about you and don’t belong to you. Eventually you care too much and then they can use that against you, reel you in, make you do more for less. It turns into a life and not work—not a job you can walk away from. I’m talking about being a mercenary. In some ways that is what I am, a literary mercenary. I do contract writing work. They bring me in, I sign a non-disclosure agreement and then they tell me what to write. My value is the voice, the productivity, and that hint of creativity I bring to the project that makes it mine and lets them know that they chose someone who gets the job done well as opposed to any old trained monkey you’d slap down in front of a keyboard and hope it types. The getting tied up is real too. It happens, and when it does the consequences can be devastating.
I’ve been doing contract work for one company or another since I was 18. My whole life is based around it, drawing me into it like a way of life. I contract as a writer. I contract as a teacher, moving through section to section, creating an appealing world of information and adventure for each class with no two ever meeting or being taught precisely the same way. I even used to contract as a DJ, a conduit between the music and the joy that aural an experience tailored to the specific people, place, and mood can bring. All of it was about the contract—the job. It never became about me.
These days I write primarily for one company in service of the RPG Shadowrun. I’ve been with them so long that I am more than a merc. I care about the people and the setting. I strive to put my fingerprint on every aspect of the world. However, it is important (and difficult) to recognize that I am still a merc. I write at their leisure and discretion. Furthermore, I tend to write the stuff they tell me to as opposed to telling the stories I want to tell. Today I had the chance to sit down with my writing group and reflect on that. Six years. I’ve gone six years without writing a story that was about me and what I want to say to the world. That 2190 blog entries worth of time and engagement that didn’t serve the stories born out of me and my experience and desires outside of Shadowrun. It was just a whole lot of me behaving like a shadowrunner and doing the jobs I’m paid to do, no matter how I feel about the work.
I don’t expect to stop anytime soon. Like I said, It’s a part of me now. Still, there are other parts and they need attention. I need to tell other stories and explore the things in my idea archive that have nothing to do with fulfilling a contract or mercking (yeah, I made that word up) through someone else’s project spec. Its high time to tell my own stories.