A little rant, for the record.
This morning I was approached, through a tip from a well meaning colleague, by a technical recruiter from Calgary who was looking for a technical writer in Victoria. But it was a junior position, and she offered me $20 an hour! That, I told her, is what my cleaner charges. This is the second recruiter in a six month period who’s offered me $20 an hour for tech writing; the last one was in Vancouver, for heaven’s sake. I think there is more pure dignity in working as a cleaner for that kind of money than as a technical writer, so I turned it down — in the interests of not driving the salary standards for professional writers any further towards the basement than they already are.
Who is accepting such wages, and can you please stop?
I think this also demonstrates the perils of agency employment vs contracting for a living; through the sweat of our brows we are offered the opportunity to subsidize the decent wages the recruiters are making. They do not seem to understand that there is a difference between a permanent salaried job with benefits that can be quoted as a theoretical hourly wage, and a contract position that requires us to patch a living together from a month here and a month there, and pay our own health care, training, holidays and overhead. Grrr.
It sounds like you have a lot of tough choices ahead of you. I would be curious about the repunctuating workshop as that is something I am presently considering in my own work. Having been a non-punctuator (symbolically that is) up to this point, I am considering the value of the mark.
While you’re in Austin struggling with which bbq to try and which workshop to attend, throw yourself also into the quandry of which music to listen to. I hear there’s great selection.
Yeah, no kidding about the music on offer! It seems Austin considers itself equal to Nashville for live music. Another impossibly conflicted session at the AWP conference is A Tribute in Words & Music to Townes Van Zandt, Texas’ Unofficial Poet Laureate. (That one’s *only* up against three others I want to go to.)
You must attend Blogs, Boards and Online Journals, if only to report back, on your blog.
Hmm, maybe blues/jazz music, bbq, and blogging?
Oh dear, you must, must, must attend the session Women Small Press Publishers on Publishing; and report back to me, me, me!!!
B-)
thumb your nose at all recruiters I say, snub and spite them. they are the vermin, the parasites, the vultures of the human resources species. hang up a shingle I say. proclaim your talent to the world. and if anyone questions it, tell them to read this blog!
P.S. Any potluck ideas for an Oscar Party with a Western theme?
Thanks Mari-Lou. Your sensible, straightforward advice always makes me feel much better. Snub and spite it is, then.
As for potluck ideas, you could go obvious (ribs) or high-cholesterol (chicken-fried steak with red-eye gravy) or obscure (to me anyway: I just found out there’s a Texas favourite called Kolache: a sweet bun made from yeasted dough with a fruit, poppy seed or even – in Texas – sausage or cheese filling).