A friend sent me an essay she found in the Telegraph, by Toby Young . His 2001 memoir, "How to Lose Friends and Alienate People", sold a quarter of a million copies and was turned into a movie, but he still needs his day job. He says a writer these days needs a substantial private income to be a full-time writer, and he cites British statistics of writers' low incomes; it's similar in Canada. I remember reading that the average writer's income is lower than that of a corps ballerina.

As a similarly underpaid playwright, I have long been quoting the Canadian playwright, Bernard Slade (Same Time Next Year): "You can make a killing in the theatre but you can't make a living." In other words, there are no guarantees.

Years ago, when one of my early plays was being produced in Waterloo, Iowa, I was brought down to help with the publicity. One of my talks was to the Junior Chamber of Commerce. The JayCees wanted to know how much money I made on that play, so I tried to figure it out. I had to tally the hours of writing (and rewriting), plus marketing, plus paper and postage, and so on. It was a ballpark figure, give or take, but I pegged my income at about 10 cents an hour, not quite a living wage. Mind you, I had a husband who supported me but my day job was quite time-consuming: raising four children. Alice Walker (The Color Purple) has said that it's possible for a woman to write with one child but more than that she's a "dead duck". Okay, so Danielle Steel has 9 children. She says she had her first child and her first book at age 19. She held down three jobs and wrote at night. I guess that says something.

Anyway, Toby Young concludes that writing is a rich man's hobby. One writer I read said it helps if you have a wife who will support you. What about women? (See above.) The few, male or female, who consistently write best-sellers and get asked for their laundry lists (and get paid for them, too), only add to the mystique and the difficulty for lesser-known authors. People learn you're a writer and they ask "Have I heard of you?" I have another writer friend who answers, "I don't know. Who have you heard of?" And you know the names without my telling you.

Well, they're right, I guess. I haven't heard of me, so why should they?

This is what my friend Marla writes when she is completely disgusted or frustrated with something. I've started writing it, too. Well, yesterday was a double-gak day. It's a good thing I'd had a good sleep the night before because it turned out to be a miserable, maddening, no-win, horrible day. And it wasn't all my fault. Granted, I forget passwords. Doesn't everyone? We've had this discussion, I'm sure. But I have one contact that never seems to remember that I forget, or doesn't remember what I last remember, or sends me to different pages. I just had to check my account balance and got waylaid. Bless the assistant; she was very patient. So was I. But by the time we were finished, I was tired. I almost didn't proceed to pay my bill (online, through my bank) when we were through Good thing I did.

I had deposited a cheque earlier in the day, in US dollars to a new US dollar account. (This had to do with a refund from my cruise people.) When I went to pay my account with the above-mentioned company, my online bank message informed me that there were insufficient funds. Nonsense! There was loads of money, much more than I usually have. So I phoned a help-line. Turned out the teller had put the money in the wrong account, changed it into Canadian funds and put a hold on it till it cleared. Wrong wrong wrong. More time fussing around until I got it straightened out. I checked this morning. The bill was paid, but the cheque is still on hold till they make sure I'm not cheating them?

GAK

By that time I was too tired to write more in my daily blog for yesterday. Hey, I've noted before that I couldn't do the work I do without a computer and the various services available and I am grateful. I can still remember typing out copy. It was a slow process and I never could afford a secretary/assistant/amanuensis/whatever. But when things go wrong, one is worse than delayed or hindered. One is screwed, if you'll pardon my language. Up a tree, up a creek, behind the eight ball - what do people say these days to express total helplessness as they struggle with a balking computer?

GAK