discrimination and writers

[Anne Frasier]

I said self-employed, not unemployed.
Had an interesting thing happen this week. I've been apartment hunting and had narrowed it down to two places, but was leaning heavily toward a hundred-unit warehouse in downtown St. Paul. The leasing agent and I had been working very closely together, emails, phone calls, planned to finalize everything by Wednesday. She sent an application form, but none of it applied to me. I haven't rented since I was nineteen, don't have an employer or bi-weekly income. I emailed back and told her I was a self-employed writer and wondered what kind of paperwork I could supply as a substitute. Didn't hear back. Emailed two days later. Nothing. Phone calls weren't returned, so I ended up going with the other apartment I was also considering. It really was a coin toss, because I liked them both a lot, and they were the same price.

So anyway, I did finally get a email from the downtown apts and she apologized for not getting back to me sooner. So it ended up not being a case of descrimination against a self-employed artist as I'd first suspected. Or at least I don't think so. Can't be sure since the follow up came so late.

It's hard to be self-employed in this country no matter what kind of work you do. We even get punished for it at tax time.

Anyway, the whole event made me wonder if any writers have any interesting tales of descrimination to share.

[Dianne Day]

I can't say I went through anything like discrimination, exactly, but I learned early on after quitting the day job that the fastest way to get across the point that I really could support myself via writing as a form of self-employoment was to take a copy of my current contract with me as proof of income.

The IRS is the absolute worst in making life difficult of self-employed writers. I'm sure I don't need to explain that statement to anyone living in the US.

[Anne Frasier]

Dianne, I've certainly used my contract when buying a house. I think it's funny, because book contracts get cancelled all the time so in reality it's not solid proof of future income -- but it does seem to work.

[Sandra Ruttan]

Last time we dealt with the bank, when they heard what I did they said, "Why don't we just put this in Kevin's name?"

The way I see it, the mortgage is in both names so I have claim to half the house, but if we divorced that credit card's all his...

[Anne Frasier]

Last time we dealt with the bank, when they heard what I did they said, "Why don't we just put this in Kevin's name?" little lady.

how annoying. yeah, had that happen.

i like your idea of the credit card versus the house.

[Sandra Ruttan]

LOL. See, you just have to spin it in a way that works for you. Some snot-nosed little banker gets arrogant with you, but you're the one traveling to the UK every year... And I have a credit card on the account, but the bill is solely in Kevin's name. Doesn't get much better than that!

[David J. Montgomery]

Writers can't complain TOO much come tax time -- who else gets to write off their vacation as "research"? :)

[Anne Frasier]

shhhhh! ;)