I wanted to share an excerpt from my latest nonfiction book, The Swirl and Swing of Words, because the idea of writers and jobs, day jobs or otherwise, has been on my mind. I recently watched a YouTube video from someone who called themselves a “full-time writer” who then admitted, later in the video, that they use the money they make from content creation, part-time retail work, and other sales jobs to help support themselves.
That person is spending a percentage of their working hours writing, yes, but also creating content and working retail. I want to stress the point that it’s okay to earn money in various ways so that we can eat and pay the rent while still pursuing our art. It’s okay to bring in money however you can. Few writers make a living writing books alone and most have multiple streams of income. Bringing in money working at the supermarket, a bookstore, or, in my case, a school, doesn’t make you less of an artist. Not ever. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. We need to let go of the idea that the only type of writer that is worthwhile is a full-time writer who makes their living solely through writing.
Here’s the excerpt from The Swirl and Swing of Words. Enjoy.
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Every writing podcast and website is devoted to telling people how to leave behind the dreadful day job (Bad job! Bad job!) and make a living writing or running a creative business. It doesn’t surprise me that quitting the day job is the focus for so many authors. It was my goal for a long time too. We tend to judge things by their dollar value (or pound value, or yen value, or whatever you use where you live). The general belief is that when you quit your day job because you make enough money selling books, then and only then have you conquered that elusive mountain called Success, leaving the rest of us to dream of the Success that eludes us.
There are a lot of authors out there—both traditional and independent—who are doing brilliantly with their books. They’re making a lot of money, and some of them do leave their jobs. Most authors want to sell as many books as they can. I certainly do. However, like with everything else in life, it’s important for each of us to decide for ourselves what we really want, not what we’re told to want by others. For a long time, I felt like a failure for holding onto my day job. “I need to be brave and quit,” I kept telling myself. Just do it! I finally had to accept that what I really want is financial security. For me, financial security means having enough to pay my rent and my bills, put gas in my car, go grocery shopping, and have savings set aside, you know, usual life stuff. I love the idea of making a living from my books, but I also love knowing that I can eat whether I have a good sales month or not.
Since I’ve been an adult and responsible for my own life, I’ve made decisions that allow me to make sure that I have enough money to take care of myself. Mind you, I’m a high school English teacher, so I’m not bringing in the big bucks here. But I live beneath my means, which means that I know my rent and my bills will be paid, and I have savings. For someone who grew up in poverty, the peace of mind that comes with having enough money to live comfortably has a price beyond measure.
Certainly, there have been times when I wanted to be my own boss. About ten years ago, I thought I’d give freelance writing a try. I hated freelance writing. I mean, I well and truly hated it. I hated that even though I always submitted my work before the deadline, the magazines or websites paid me when they got around to it. Sometimes the payment wasn’t the right amount (Did we agree to $400? I have here $250…), and sometimes my payment was lost in transit (Are you sure you didn’t get it? It says here it was deposited last Tuesday…). Sometimes, there wasn’t as much work in July as there was in May, and I felt like a child again, worrying about whether or not the bills would be paid.
I know writers want to make a living writing, but the reality is that few do. The thing about book sales is that they fluctuate. After a while, sales of even best-selling books slow down. If you make enough money while sales are hot to feel confident depending on that as your income, then do so. If you have a more adventurous spirit than I do, then do what feels right for you. I’m simply showing why leaving our jobs isn’t the ultimate goal for every creative person in the world.
We write books because we want people to read them, and book sales are a good indicator of how many people are reading our books. Beyond that, I suspect that people want to leave their jobs for other reasons. We saw inklings of this during the COVID years when the Great Resignation hit and people were leaving their jobs in droves. Then, when people realized they still needed a roof over their heads, we went from the Great Resignation to Quiet Quitting, where people kept their jobs but kept the amount of work they did to a bare minimum. I wonder if the issue is less that people feel as if they must make their living as writers and more that they are unhappy with their current jobs and think making a living selling books would make them happier.
The general wisdom is to commodify everything. We’ve done our creativity a great injustice by insisting that the only way to be successful is to make a boatload of money at it. Whenever someone shows the tiniest aptitude at some- thing, we tell them to make money from it. If you enjoy baking, you should open a bakery. If you like writing, you should make a living selling your books. Find your passion and make money at it! The problem with this way of thinking is that it forgets that we need people with jobs in our society. We need doctors and nurses and teachers and car mechanics and people who know how to fix things. I’m sure being a trash collector isn’t the most exciting job in the world, and I’m pretty sure it’s no one’s passion, but I certainly don’t want to live someplace where the trash isn’t collected. In The Creative Act, Rick Rubin said, “…if the choice is between making great art and supporting yourself, the art comes first. Consider another way to make a living. Success is harder to come by when your life depends on it.”
The novelist Octavia E. Butler worked as a telemarketer. She also worked as a warehouse worker, a dishwasher, and a potato chip inspector. Although potato chip inspector sounds kind of cool. I would be a potato chip inspector. Rick Rubin calls work like this, “jobs that demand your time, but little else.” Butler was university-educated, but she chose low-wage jobs so that she would have time for writing. She woke up at 2 a.m. so she could write before the day’s work. Butler is rightfully known as one of the queens of science fiction and fantasy. I read her time-travel novel Kindred while I was writing my own time-travel story, and her story- telling skills blew me away. Perhaps, for those of us who want to put our creativity first, we might choose a job that takes up our time and little else, thereby reserving our mental space for our creative endeavors.
We should pursue our goals unreservedly. We should discover our passions, plant them, water them, cultivate them, and watch them bloom. But as Elizabeth Gilbert said in Big Magic, we are doing our creativity a great injustice by expecting it to make our living for us. Rick Rubin said much the same. I’ve lost track of the times I’ve heard creatives say that making money with their passion takes the joy away since what was once a fulfilling form of self- exploration and self-expression became something to panic over. In such cases, their passion became a job, complete with all of the stresses and frustrations they were trying to leave behind in the first place.
Professor Erin Cech said, “Passion shouldn’t be the standard to which everyone is held when we’re asking them what they do for work…We have to recognize that people have different motivations for why they work hard.” I can be more creative because I don’t have to worry about how I’m going to make ends meet, even during those months when my book sales are slow. Yes, I have less time to write than I would if I quit my job, but you know what? The writing gets done. One of my favorite authors is Abraham Verghese, who is a medical doctor and a professor at Stanford. It took him 14 years to write The Covenant of Water while he continued both of his busy jobs. Yes, it took him 14 years to write his novel but look at what he had at the end—a modern masterpiece.
These days, there are other ways for creatives to make money. You can have a podcast, a vlog, and a blog. You can also go on speaking engagements and create courses to sell online. If those endeavors sound interesting to you, then try them out. I tried creating a podcast when I was running The Copperfield Review, and by the third week I realized that I didn’t enjoy it. I didn’t find the process of running a podcast interesting enough to sustain, and it took too much time away from writing. I want to write, not research, record, and edit podcasts. I’m a homebody, and the idea of traveling to speaking engagements doesn’t thrill me either. A steady paycheck allows me the time and the mental space to write instead of doing things that aren’t interesting to me. For a while, I worked as a freelance editor who helped writers with their historical novel manuscripts. When the work lost its luster, I was able to let it go and focus on my own writing. I can write my books, market them to the best of my ability, and then I can relax knowing that my rent will be paid and whatever books I sell are extra income. A job is not an excuse for not writing. If you’re an artist, the art will happen. That’s what makes you an artist.