 |
| A critic's house. ((Morguefile.) |
Louis Shalako
So far I’ve written eighteen novels. Louis
Shalako has sixteen novels, Zach
Neal has one novel, (a thriller), and Dusty
Miller has a novel.
Looking back, it’s pretty obvious that I didn’t really
have to publish every single one of them independently. If you can write
eighteen novels, sustaining yourself independently on the literary field of
battle for years at a stretch, (against some pretty darned good competition I
might add), then you could probably have gotten yourself a publishing contract.
Why ever would they not be
interested in a guy like me?
You like character,
don’t you? Fluff-heads don’t write books and we all know it.
Okay, so we’ve all got some character.
Here’s my big challenge.
A twenty thousand dollar advance would come in one
lump sum. Under the guidelines of the Ontario
Disability Support Program, I’m only allowed a couple hundred a month
without penalty. I’m only allowed to have six or seven grand in my personal
account. It would be considered income. Assuming I’m running it as a business,
I would be allowed about the same in a business account. The trouble is that I
would be over the limit, and they
would sort of insist that I take money out of the account. At that point, it is
income and they can penalize me,
taking fifty cents on the dollar. Since we’re talking a few grand in my hot
little hand, I would lose the pension, (eleven hundred a month) for at least a
few months. There’s a real incentive there to piss it away as quick as you can—hoping
to get your pension back without a big fight.
That’s money I don’t have to work for—it’s already mine.
Investing back into the business is also possible, but you have to clear it with
them first. They don’t always agree. This is not the most responsive business
model and all for what, a couple of hundred bucks? A thousand bucks on a
computer or something, a no-brainer when you get right down to it. Funny thing
is, someone can give you a gift of five grand, and they don’t penalize you at all.
Just
promise you won’t spend it on food, shelter and clothing.
That’s what’s so funny about this system. It’s a
complex situation, and I’m not here to explain all the guidelines, which even
long-term staff members can’t do either.
It’s not that easy dealing with the ODSP. They can be
tough when their instincts are aroused and especially so if you present them
with a fait accompli.
They have to go by the book—and my situation isn’t in
the book.
Just think about that one for a minute.
They’re bureaucrats—and they have to go by the book,
which is written by lawyers and handed down by the Ministry.
Next thing you know there’s a fifty-foot microscope up
your ass. They’re giving you all sorts of problems, (just doing their jobs of
course) and the most important thing you need to do is to write your next book.
At some point, you’ve run out of cash. Eventually you
should start getting the full monthly benefit again. If you take money out of
your personal account, that’s one thing. You’ve already paid the penalty on it
as income, and theoretically they
shouldn’t give you a rough time because you spent it. They tried to double-ding
me once, but I rather doubt they’ll try that one again. Not with me, but
someone less well-informed for sure.
That’s why I like informing people.
But if you’re short of cash, need car repairs, the kid
needs braces on their teeth or something, taking money out of the business
account, and spending it for personal needs would be considered income. And
they tag you for fifty cents on every dollar as income.
I would have a hard time trying to explain to a
publisher that I really need a forty thousand dollar advance just to get the
same benefit as any other person getting twenty. A member of the bourgeoisie
can be making a hundred and fifty grand a year. To them, twenty thousand is
still useful money. People in certain income brackets have more tax shelters
than someone like me, where every penny of disposable income goes into keeping
a roof over my head, shoes on my feet and food in my belly.
There’s a kind of disconnect there. There is some
question of fairness. I get hit with
penalties and risk my pension, where some other person, another first-time
author, can at least get the whole thing. They’re not risking their daytime
job. They can stick it into a registered retirement plan, and defer the taxes
until they take it out after age sixty-five. For them, it’s a big plum. Presumably,
they would be getting a lower tax rate on that money as they are no longer working
when they take it out. But. People over sixty-five still work—and Revenue Canada (the tax
people) aren’t hitting them with a
fifty-percent gouge just for taking a part-time job.
Otherwise, people over sixty-five wouldn’t want to
work, because at some point it’s just not worth it.
Also related to fairness, a person on ODSP is living
thirty to forty percent below the poverty line already. Sticking them with
employment penalties of fifty cents on the dollar seems grossly unfair when
they’re already rising above themselves. We are risking much by going against
the grain of apathy, despair and self-destruction which is all too common among
a certain subset of the population. We are doing what is most assuredly not
expected of us.
So. Earning a couple of hundred dollars a month (and
not much more) is not such a bad thing.
The ODSP leaves me alone. I don’t have
to fight with them constantly.
Okay, here’s my challenge. Book sales are cyclical. (Also
seasonal to some degree.) You never know what you’re going to earn next
month—and next month is when that ‘overpayment deduction’ is going to hit your
cheque.
It gets worse. After two hundred dollars, they start
hitting you with that fifty percent penalty.
People talk about traction in this
business. I’m standing on a greasy slope, pushing a boulder uphill already. Traction
is in short supply around here.
Every little thing is already stacked against me. That’s
why they call it disability.
I would need a twenty-grand advance once a year, every
stinking year, just to replace that disability pension, which includes things
like drug, dental and eyeglass benefits.
All your medical is covered under ODSP and Ontario
Hospital Insurance Plan benefits. Once you’re off the pension and
self-employed, you are paying for all of that yourself—eyeglasses, dental and
OHIP premiums. And you’re still living below the poverty line.
This is the challenge faced by millions of Canadians making
minimum wage, incidentally.
And what are the odds that you can get that kind of
advance, each and every year? Not if you’re not selling a ton of books. Lots of
midlist authors are dropped and they have to go looking. They don’t always find
what they need, either.
Let’s say you just plain run out of luck—a word that I
personally despise. How are you ever going to convince the ODSP that you are
incapable of writing anymore? I fought for two and a half years to qualify for
the pension. My brother, whose back is worse than mine, fought them for four
years before finally proving his case.
The real benefit of independently publishing my books,
is that I at least have control—I can pull the fuel rods out of that reactor if
I absolutely must. Also, with eighteen books out, one might think that any
potential advance would (or could or should) be greater.
Because you know what I can do. Because you know I’m
going to finish what I start.
In order to replace my pension, (assuming I live to be
about eighty-five years old), I would need approximately $377,000.00 over the
next twenty-nine years. (And I would still be living below the poverty line.)
Things might be different if I was twenty years old.
But I’m fifty-six. I am getting kind of unemployable
anyways. That is to say, for anything except a minimum-wage job, where they will essentially take anybody...
That sort of advance money, that level of book sales,
doesn’t just come out of nowhere. It’s really only thirteen grand (or twenty say) worth of
royalties in any given year. What percentage of ‘professional’ writers make
that much money, year in and year out?
If you seriously wanted me to ghost-write a novel for
you, you need to bear this sort of thing in mind. If you think there are easy
answers, you are wrong.
As sales mount, if the monthly numbers go up, there
will be a rather painful state. This is where they’re chiseling away at the
benefit cheque at their dirty little fifty-percent rate, and I’m struggling
away, working eighteen hours a day and still living seven or eight thousand
dollars below the poverty line.
This is an obvious disincentive to success as it is
presently defined by someone else, who in my particular case, has no idea of
what they’re actually fucking talking about.
This is why I make political statements on behalf of
Ontario’s seven hundred and fifty thousand disabled people from time to time.
I will probably keep on doing it.
Because
someone has to do it.
It’s called character,
ladies and gentlemen.
It’s
a real good word when you think about it.
END
I’m not ungrateful for the pension. It’s just that
certain improvements might be made. The pension is meant to provide for certain
living expenses. It is subsistence, nothing more. This is all it was ever meant
to be, and that much is understood. It is also a guarantee of a lifetime of
poverty, with all of its attendant issues of quality of life, not to mention increased
health-care costs to a system already overburdened by an aging and quite
frankly sedentary population.
Thank you for reading.
