You're a writer who starves if ...

You're a writer who starves if:

1. When you feel magnanimous, and you think you've had enough with three consecutive days of eating sandwiches made with bread from the supermarket (for 80 cents) and a delicious coleslaw (for €1.49),  you decide to give yourself a culinary privilege and buy a Happy Meal at McDonald's for the expensive price of € 3.69.
2. When you are eating your Happy Meal, enjoying the spectacular view that a fast food restaurant's second floor can offer, you look through the window a guy running down the street and you notice he drops, apparently, a pack of cigarettes.
3. Automatically you choke yourself in a hurry to go down and collect the package before any other insane pick it up first. You cross the street running away from the double decker buses, which are coming in the opposite direction, you take the pack and although there are only three cigarettes left, you are happy: maaaan, a trio of cigars! And no need to roll them! Without any doubts, the addictive success of the month.

You're a writer who starves if:

1. You work cleaning hostels dreaming to possess, like Virginia Woolf, one day, your own room, where the snore of four Italians, in a not so operatic choir at three o'clock in the morning, disturbes your imagination.
2. You collect toothpastes, shampoos and deodorants (even if they are for man; at least in that way you can remember how a guy used to smell) that customers leave in the hostel, so at least you do not spend money on that.
3. Your collection includes toothpastes in Portuguese, deodorants in English (Old Spice) and shampoo in a language that seems to be Slovak, but at least has a regenerator and universal Pantene written on the bottle.

You're a writer who starves if:

1. When you walk down the street, during your unemployed stroll you regret at least once to have stopped studying music to devote yourself to the literature. The one euro coins in the case of that violinist who plays around the corner are more visible than the ones in your bank account.
2. You wished to have had talent for other arts. It is feasible to paint on the street and make money. It is feasible to dance on the street and make money. It is feasible to sing on the street and make money. It is feasible to sculpt on the street and make money. But it is not feasible to read a novel on the street, where passersby are always in a hurry, starring their own personal stories. The golden days when the medieval bards were in style are gone. Face it. Sweet Middle Ages times, fleeting from me forever now...!
3. You start considering that to dress yourself up like a gnome in a Dublin's street is a much more useful, profitable and honorable profession. You stare at a fake goblin, who receives at least five clients in ten minutes and get one euro from each of them, just to pose for a picture in a mythological hug, which makes a fantasy come true in a stupid touristic turn. At that moment, you realize that the fucking leperchaun makes a bunch of money and you start to evaluate the possibility to invest your savings in a green suit topped by a crazy hat, adorned by an honorable and brilliant buckle.
   
   It seems like she is carrying the goblin's head, but noooo: the leperchaun is still alive, making the big bucks.

You're a writer who starves if:

1. You spend more, more, waaaay more hours looking for a job on websites, polishing your resume and filling requests, than the time that you actually invest writing.
2. You dream about getting that job, which consists in creating avatars for an explicit dating website, so far the most lucrative employment that you have been able to find.
3. You think that this job provides you with  some sort of space to improve your creativity and create characters, especially when you can write in the space designated to the bra's size: "Guess..." or the naughty: "I'll tell you later."

You're a writer who starves if:

1. When somebody ask about your profession, your answer is "journalist", although you haven't worked as one for soooo long, even if you studied Journalism for four years, in the worst possible academic joke ever.
2. To give the answer "writer" seems too big for you, like saying "I'm an astronaut" and you think that trying to fulfill the dream you have since you were a little girl is not respected in the grown ups world.
3. Even though your friends say you write very well, they still advise you to get a more lucrative and realistic job, like those ones related to customer service, sales, and of course, the glorious call center, the new century's coal mine. And the best part is that your friends are 100% right: you definitely should do that.

You're a writer who starves if:

1. You have slept, at least once, in an airport, train station or park.
2. You have considered (as you smoke the last cigarette of the trio lost by that guy who ran in front of McDonald's) to pay €50 for a bed in a hotel, with the same eagerness with Adam and Eve could have seen their lost paradise, once they were on the other side of the fence, naked and screwed.
3. You ended up sleeping under a staircase in your sleeping bag, with two Benadryl in order to build a wall made of dreams, which keeps you away from the solvent people, who keep walking in the middle of the night towards some place where they do have a bed to write the day's final period. But not you: your destiny is to close the sleeping bag, while the culinary's common denominator with Adam and Eve, an apple for dinner, get digested slowly in your stomach. However, even when the floor is cold, you sleep for nine hours deeply and the next day you wake up in a very good mood, as if you slept in the privileged hotel's thalamus across the street, exclusively for the gods. But who wants to be a god anyway?

You're a writer who starves if:

1. You are infinitely more used to hearing many, many "no" and almost no "yes" at all.
2. Or better: even more used to that "no", you are infinitely more used to the silence of those who did not even bother to answer.
3. Since you know you always have a guaranteed "no", you do not mind going for the "yes", because you know that, in any case, you have nothing to lose.

You're a writer who starves if:

1. You've had more jobs in random places, such as construction sites, hotels for dogs, nudist camps and hostels, than in an editorial or in a newspaper.
2. Earning $ 400 per month seems to you as a magic amount, almost obscene, which would solve all your problems, like a monetary panacea.
3. You think working at random and unstable places will help you to create interesting characters and write stories, which you will be proud of once someone deigns to open up the Parnaso's back door for you.

You're a writer who starves if:

1. Having a room in an attic to write eight hours per day seems like paradise.
2. You have it right now and you can not stop writing, but at the end you can only do it for two hours, since you have to feed the dogs, clean their poop from the multi square feet garden, and hug when they come into your room, wagging their lovely tails!
3. You think taking a bath in a tub at the end of the day is the best thing that has happened to you in weeks, a water-hygienic privilege which deserves at least 30 minutes daily. Still, you take the laptop with you to the bathroom to keep writing: nothing like to write in a bathtub full of warm water!
   
   My German attic.

You're a writer who starves if:

1. You take more care of your laptop than your passport, your debit cards, your camera and even the Cow herself.
2. Being without Internet seems to you like being with no air, no oxygen to check the Dictionary of the Royal Academy of Spanish Language or the synonyms Dictionary, for those moments of suffocating cacophony.
3. You prefer to not have a health insurance, in case the laptop gets broken. It is more important.

You're a writer who starves if:

1. You spend too much time alone, days and weeks that begin to turn into months.
2. You hated it at first, but now you're more used to and you feel this will be your destiny. To be a writer is a solitary profession anyway, and you better be comfortable with your own ghosts, which usually come to drink a cup of coffee with you.
3. You consider that the only way to deal with your loneliness is to listen to the keyboard in response to your thoughts.

You're a writer who starves if:

1. You watch this video at least three times per week in order to give yourself encouragement: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwJMC0CjVwc
2. You feel proud to be out of your comfort zone to live fully in your panic zone, which has not yet been transformed into “the magical area” precisely. But no worries: we are working on it.
3. Emotional stress attacks you every day, even more than the creative one, but after a cigarette, when the smoke fades, everything looks better. (Yeah, like the best tobacco's advertising from the 80's).

You're a writer who starves if:

1. Every single encouragement comment, every single like, every single shared link, and every single word is a reason to continue. They mean infinitely more than the cold "Thank you" from a client to whom you have unlocked the credit card for, more than the relief face of a guest when he or she finds a clean room after a long journey, and certainly much, much more than that polaroid smile that the fucking leperchaun receives, even when he is smiling mask outside only. Knowing that someone liked what you wrote means that you have touched his or her soul, even with a brief sigh of letters.
2. You have received support from people you never expected it and you start to think that if they believe in you, even when you may never have met them, you should believe in yourself and enlighten that lonely darkness with the laptop's glow.
3. Even when it is difficult, you can still make fun of yourself and feel satisfied that, although perhaps you've made a bad decision, bad decisions are precisely those with the potential to become the best stories. And you know you will be able, sooner or later, to write a happy ending for this one.
   
   Do you like the way I write, or do you prefer seeing me in goblin's clothes? Do you think that being a writer is a respected profession, just like any other? So please, please share this text in your social networks or, if you feel like doing positive karma points today, click on the buttons on the right side and subscribe yourself, or give me whatever you think is fair for my work. Just imagine that you invited me a coffee.Thank you for reading! :)