Time to Ice the Cake

3/1/2002

My mind is numb, my brain is fried and the other side of my brain is screaming that it is time for a break.

You can only write so much of the stuff, or you will surely go blind.

For three days all I have thought about is writing. I have written in the airport, on the airplane, in my car, at the office and finally polished it off at home.

Section 162 of the Internal Revenue Code states that: “there shall be allowed as a deduction all the ordinary and necessary expenses paid or incurred during the taxable year in carrying on any trade or business, including. . .”

For those of you who don’t know, the real money in writing, unless you are Tom Clancy, is found in the world of technical writing.

One day I was studying for an advanced stock-broker exam and I called the company that sold the study materials. I told the guy on the other end of the phone that the questions were ambiguous at best, and several had mistakes. In frustration I exclaimed; “I can write better test questions that these. I’ve even had training on how to write questions.”

He took my phone number.

Then someone from the company called, a resume was sent, references were checked and I had my first writing/editing job in the bag.

Last April I wrote about looking for another such assignment, landed one, and it provided the bulk of my income for the past 9 months. Recently that assignment was put on “hold” and I, financially hooked on this writing gig, am looking for more work.

Current at stake, is another “job” in the same field, although if they use me, I will be the “consultant” and won’t move to southern Ohio for the Job.

In order to narrow the field, we wanna-be’s were given an assignment, to see if our writing style worked in the corporate culture. My assignment was to write a 5,000 word summary of some really thrilling parts of the Internal Revenue Code.

You know it’s bad when you wake up from a dream about the documentation requirements for “associated-with” business travel and entertainment deductions.

That’s bad.

But it’s done, and so are the 4 multiple choice test questions.

Tonight and tomorrow I am working on a little interactive-multimedia thing that I am going to ship down on a CD.

The way I see it, a little icing never hurt.

And I even found some time to re-polish a story about some birds

Oh yea, they are paying for the 5,000 word job application and test questions. I'll throw in the frosting for free.