In my recent post about my struggle to find a literary agent, an interesting discussion arose in the comment thread that I would like to answer in a whole post. Thanks to y'all for raising the issues.
Among other things, @tomreedtoon said:
I mean to say that in a short time, NO one will be paid a FREAKING DIME for writing. You weren't paid to write your excellent article for Salon, were you? Why should a publisher, either on line or in the dying print magazines, pay you anything for writing anything?
And I'm not talking about the blue-sky million-dollar advance. I'm saying you won't be paid back for anything you do. "Thanks for the article. We'll print it. Why should we pay you for your paper, toner, or effort? You're just a writer. You're not worth anything. In fact, you're a pain in the ass. Go away. There's thousands of people just like you who want their ego stroked. Get out and don't use our bathroom on the way out." That is not the far-flung future of writing. That is the present.
The economics of publishing are radically changing. I don't know where we're going to end up; eventually the physical book may well be a museum piece. But I think the above comments go too far.
First we should distinguish between a piece of online content -- such as a blog post (which is what I put up, not an "excellent article," much as I appreciate the kind word), an opinion piece, or any piece of writing that does not require much research -- and, on the other hand, actual reporting. Looking at novels, we should distinguish between a piece of entertainment, such as an everyday mystery or romance (not that there's anything wrong with writing or liking to read such work) on the one hand, and a genuine literary novel on the other. The fact that there's no bright line between them makes people think that they're all one thing, and they aren't. On one end of the spectrum, some books are pure products of the entertainment industry (for example, the products of Alloy Entertainment -- see this NYT article), and on the other end of the spectrum, novels that are works of art.
As for never being "paid back" for my expenses such as toner and postage, much less my research trip to India, it's true that the wages of writing are rarely a living one. But that's just another thing to work out in the modern world. My compromise is to have a lucrative day job in the software industry, which pays the bills but keeps me from writing more than one day a week. That's my choice and my accomodation. Yes, it keeps me from being what I can be as a writer. But I'm not just a writer, I'm also a bourgeois with a house and a spouse who is unable to work, so I can't run off and be a writer full time at the moment.
As I said in a comment in my previous piece, there is a delusion in our culture about how anyone with the right idea can become a best-selling author or screenwriter. There's also a fantasy about what it means to be a writer, a fantasy addressed in those ads for creative writing MFA programs in the back pages of upscale magazines. The NYU program's advertising slogan is "Live the life of a writer" in New York, conjuring visions of windy walks along concerete canyons as the autumn leaves race by, talking with fellow Writers (we're all wearing knit scarves and black overcoats) about our projects. How romantic! Or maybe you think about Miller and Hemingway et al. in Paris in the 1920s; I'm sure there's some creative writing program that promises to bring that fantasy to life for you, complete with cocktails on the terrace of Le Dôme. I wouldn't go as far as @tomreedtoon -- who implies creative writing programs are utterly cycnical, collecting your money and holding out hope that your MFA will automatically translate into a career as a novelist -- but some aspects of their marketing do make me queasy.
You can go to an MFA program and it'll probably be great. You'll have the opportunity to spend two years doing nothing but working on your writing. I haven't done such a program -- I wish I could! -- but anyone who does should go in with eyes open. From that program, if you apply yourself, you're going to get a great experience, a few contacts, and probably a finished novel. Will it be any good? Will you "be a writer" when you finish? No promises. Quite frankly it really depends on your own talent and aptitude. Flannery O'Connor got an MFA. Haruki Murakami didn't.
If you really want to know what the life of a writer is like, all you have to do is read Miller. Read the Rosy Crucifixion trilogy -- all of it. Miller lived hand-to-mouth for decades, mostly depending on his wife to bring in lucre by gold-digging. Or read Roberto Bolaño's The Savage Detectives, which is really about the cost of being a committed artist, at the expense of all your relationships and all your resources including your health.
In the end, it's not about any of the fantasies we have about what it means to be an author. It's just about what you write, and in this culture, it's also about who you know. If you're a 30-year-old with publishing contacts living in New York, you have a leg up. If you're not (and I'm not), sorry about that.
To close: @tomreedtoon might ask if I should get paid for writing this. The answer is obviously no. I didn't research anything, I didn't dig up any information beyond what I could Google in 10 seconds, and it's all off the top of my head. Did you read all the way to the end? Well, maybe I'm living the life of a writer after all.
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Writing, or any of the arts, has never been about becoming rich and famous. Some do. Some don't. That can't be our priority. Our priority is to write. That's it. If we work on our writing enough, someone might connect with it and help us reach others with our writing.
For me, I've always felt that artists need to have some kind of skill or education to fall back on in case we don't make enough money with our art. That's what most of us do. We work jobs we don't particularily enjoy so we can have a roof and food and continue doing our art. Some of us are lucky enough to have a "day job" that we enjoy. (I don't.) Some of us are lucky enough to make a living through our art. That's wonderful and I celebrate their success.
Perhaps as a culture, we should rethink how we value and compensate writers and others artists. A great book lasts for thousands of years. A computer is outdated as soon as it comes to market. Which is more futile?
Writing is hard work. Researching and reporting and analyzing are hard. I can't tell you how many bloggers have picked up news stories and other work I create for my paid journalistic work and yet I don't get a penny of the ad revenue or any of the audience from that. Others profit from my labor and yours.
Writing is work. To disagree with your commentor, just because you aren't paid for it doesn't mean you shouldn't be. After all, we pay Paris Hilton to do what again?
Every time I post a real good blog on OS, my book's Amazon sales ranking goes down noticeably. Sure it probably only means that 1-10 people bought my book, but it also means that they saw that I could write and decided they wanted more.
A lot of people are drawn to writing because it looks easy. Got a computer and a dictionary? Here I go!
I have an MFA, and many contacts, and experience editing and writing at a nationally known paper. For four years I edited and published a literary magazine. Last year I made $0 writing. That is just how it goes. So anyone who is in it to get famous and make money should consider other options. Only write if you are a writer, body and soul, and have no choice. Otherwise, the profession will make you bitter.
Writers write because we have to, to achieve balance and sanity, or we would be serial killers. If you have another talent or interest, pursue that instead.
It has never been easy to get paid for creative writing, and it's getting harder all the time. The phenomenon of the "long tail" applies to creative writing, too: a few people will make millions, a million people will make a little or nothing, and the middle gets squeezed to the bottom.
Where there has always been money has been in copywriting.
I have been a professional--and freelance--copywriter for many years. It's a skill, no doubt. But if you develop the contacts, it's lucrative and the work is steady. There just aren't many good copywriters out there.
It's also a good way to support your lifestyle by actually writing for a living. And nobody says you can't write the stuff you love on the side. I have written novels, short stories, poems, and lots of other things for myself--and for publication--while paying the bills writing ad copy.
The opportunity today is that there's a shitload of stuff that needs to be written for the web. The danger is the long tail again: if you're an expert, your content is valuable. Otherwise, it's free. Ultimately, we as writers have to demand that people pay us for our work and stop giving it away.
Most of us are never going to "make a living with our art." But most other artists aren't going to, either. Actors, painters, musicians--all of them have day jobs, too. I'm just saying that I've found a way to make the only skill I have (outside of cooking) support my writing habit.
b) Forget literary novels. No one's buying.
c) Connections don't help unless everybody at the publishing house loves the book.
d) Magazine writing is dead.
e) Even in you sell a script, the odds of getting the movie made are more than 100 to 1.
f) Keep writing anyway.
John B, I like how he said it: write anyway.
Thanks for the breath of fresh air.
As soon as I started to read this, I thought of an article in the current issue of Wired:
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/10/ff_demandmedia
This article gave me a chill, because just a few years ago I made my living in journalism, and sometimes entertain thoughts about getting back into that game. The article profiles a company, Demand Media, which the author says is highly profitable, posting thousands of articles for which the writers are paid about $15/article. At those kind of rates, can anyone make a decent living?
Then tonight I heard a segment on CBC News about major newspapers outsourcing their ad layout work to India. The gist of the story was that copyediting will be next, and then perhaps some of the writing. So the downward pressure on wages in all aspects of journalism is likely to accelerate.
i'm a recent college grad with a (near-worthless) degree in journalism ... you could say i'm currently paralyzed by the printed word's uncertain future.
frank indiana,
what did you go to school for? how exactly did you get started with copywriting?
Op-Ed writers and syndicated opinion columnists don't do anything more and do get paid for what is simply their opinion.
I'm pretty much in agreement with Gwendolyn, Julie, Rob and others who say that the writing itself must be its own reward because you're not likely to get any other. But I also have the motivation that I'll be able to connect with others through my work. When I hear from readers of my two story collections* that I've touched a nerve with them, it's a fantastic feeling. And it's not about "Wow, they think I'm a good writer," it's a profound feeling connection and gratitude that someone took the time to read and understand my work.
MissMisk, Frank, John Blumenthal et al. point to various related occupations that one does in order to write. I said my job's in software but I forgot to say I'm a technical writer which, all things considered, is probably about the most money you can make writing without being a bestselling author. Speaking of which...
Bart points to a story about newspapers outsourcing work to India. Yeah, they tried that with tech writing too, but speaking professionally, it really doesn't work that well.
Frank, I thought the term "the long tail" meant that my books published in 2001 are still available for purchase on the internet. maybe I misunderstood. I liked what you said about how if you're an expert, your content is valuable. I'm not sure that applies to literary fiction though.
* http://www.toobeautiful.org/books.html#cleisbooks
Sad but true. The long tail is not good news for writers. "Expert" certainly does not apply to literary fiction.
I have been lucky enough to call myself a professional writer for the past 20 years. Which is not to say I am rolling in excess cash. I do not drive a Mercedes, my house is not expansive and elegantly appointed, and my savings account has far fewer zeros than I wish it did. But I have no complaints. I wanted to be a writer and I that is exactly what I am.
The truth is I write because I have something to say. I have no burning desire to sit down at my computer and press the keys for hours on end. But I do earn a living doing that very thing. So I do it. And at least part of the time I get to write things I want to write, to say things that are important for me to say. OS gives me a great platform to do that from on a regular basis. Granted, no money changes hands, but I get to write in a leisurely manner. No editor changes my text, no publisher complains about the tone of my piece. I just get to write what I want and enjoy the feedback I get from fellow OS users.
That's a pretty good deal from my perspective. I'm glad to be here. And I'm glad to have met you here, too.
Before the www and before print-on-demand, huge numbers of books, which appeal only to a very narrow and geographically dispersed niche, could not be published except at a heavy loss. But now the widely dispersed readers can find the very specialized books. No stores need to stock them, and no self-published author need pay for a whole storeroom full of books from a modest-size press run; the only inventory cost is the cost of a few megabytes in a computer server somewhere. As a result, many more writers can get their books out to readers, even if those readers number in the hundreds instead of the thousands. Granted, that's no way to make a living, but if you've got something to say, it's better to have that option than to have no options.
Any chance you'll write a post on your experiences with Lulu?
Here's a link to Mark's book "How They Scored" for those who are interested:
http://tinyurl.com/ykvgl74
Fact: Ariana lives in a mansion in Beverley Hills and sees nothing wrong with paying great writers nothing.
Fact: Until professional writers refuse to work for free and these sites have to rely on increasingly rank amateurs to fill their pages, nothing will change.
Fact: I do not write what I do best professionally at OS because I am not being paid for the work and research that it would entail. That is my choice.
Yet you are very right that there's a difference between an Open Salon post and the reporting and research I do on a magazine feature for which I'm paid (and John B., magazines aren't quite dead yet, really--hey, don't say that, I get *paid* to teach magazine writing--well, not very much. Uh-oh.).
The pieces I do for OS are largely op-eds in which I'm either reacting to another writer's work or recycling reporting/research in areas where I have professional expertise. I also try out personal anecdotes and other kinds of writing in blogs, because it allows me to develop these ideas, based on the feedback (or lack of feedback) I receive.
That said, I want to believe that blogs may somehow evolve into a medium that generates cash--beyond the few professional bloggers out there. I'm going to write more about that, here and elsewhere.
I write because I love to write. Period. That's the definition of a writer.
Writing isn't about bringing news. It is about insight the reader can be caught by and maybe even use. Insight doesn't have to come from research. It mostly comes from experience, and analysis, and the ability to "bring it" when you need it.
Good writers spend years and years working on their craft. So, even if it takes 0.2 seconds to express something like the feeling I get when I pee after involuntary sex with my pharmacist to get my meds, it is expression of that feeling or that sartori that is important to the reader.
Writing isn't writing. That's just half of it. It's what you communicate that goes in the readers brain and hopefully bounces around enuff to create some new neural paths. That doesn't need research or a degree or be dependent on time spent researching or working hard.
Writers don't need a degree in Writing (which I have), you need to "hear the music".
You need to write because you have to write, which everybody here understands.
How you get paid, I don't know. I've made my living as a writer for decades, and now I seemingly don't know how anymore, or frankly I wouldn't be writing here. I wouldn't have the time.
Regarding the perennial question of "what is a writer?": Some years back I attended a reading by the bestselling author Lee Child. He defined a writer as someone who makes a connection with their audience, by which he meant that you get read and get a response from your readers. Without that connection, you're not a writer. This works for me. While I actually have earned a little from my novels (considering all the time and effort I've invested in them, I figure it comes out to an hourly wage of about $0.013), it's the contact with the audience I've always been after, the sense that I'm part of the discussion and not just talking into the wind. That's what keeps me going and not dreams of "quitting my day job."
Highly rated!
A fierce Voice, but you come through as real, accessible.
Love the citations, Miller and Flannery; Flannery angled it well, but got lucky in her choice of (and abuse of) friends. So there's another tip: not just loved ones, you can convince a small retinue of monied admirers to endure your year-long presence at summer homes, nurse you when sick, while you write and write, you might make out.
Monied retinues. sigh.
Yes, HuffPost, Salon et al thrive on the willingness of writers to give away their writing for free. But, in turn, consumers have become entirely dependent on a free-information digital universe. And the advertising model of supporting online publishling is not sustainable. We are all complicit.
Not to mention that our attention spans and disposable time has taken a huge hit. Case in point: instead of reading a book or my hard copy newspaper, I've just spent my free time reading OS. For free.
I could be wrong but I find that, in general, artistic, creative people are not as business-minded and don't have that intense drive to persevere and aggressively push their goods. It's sad because some of the most talented people I know are also the ones who can barely pay their bills.
I agree with the others: a writer is someone who needs to write and who views every situation and sight as a library of material.
Great post.
Thank you for a fantastic trip you embarked me upon with your post.
http://www.dictionmatters.com
With the exception of a few "stars" -- artists, whether the be writers, painters, musicians or architects, don't earn much. many are lucky enought to find a way to make a living -- as paid journalists for media companies, session musicians, draftsmen or as mentioned copywriters. I have a friend -- an ex professional musician who has toured with Dolly Parton among others -- who now makes $100 a night for the occasional gig. I don't klnow how many times I have listened to a band at a bar, or heard a writer read and thought "Man, that (band, man, woman) is really good. Too bad they don't get paid what they are doing is worth.
Ah -- but that's the problem. It's simple economics. In it's purest form, a person is paid commensurate with what he or she can deliver to the organization. The promoters that agreed to pay Michael Jackson $50 million for the London concerts weren't planning on being a charity. They were expecting his performances to make them a profit -- a handsome one.
Why is J.K. Rowling worth billions? Her books sell and make the publishers money. Why do people pay $150 a ticket to hear U2, yet turn away from a $10 cover charge to hear a good band in the local bar? Well, a lot of it is promotion. As good as U2 may be, the evening is probably not 15 times better (or more, with the $30 parking and the $10 beers). And yet ...
There are a lot of situations where people intern for very low wages or even no pay to learn a trade. There are loss leader items and free giveaways to promote business. I suppose part of my view of the internet is the opportunity to get your work out there. Call it promotion or internships or critique. I may not be able to buy a cup off coffee with it -- but it sure feels good when somebody likes something I have written. Especially when it's a stranger. And I suspect it will be even more of an accomplishment when someone tells me what's wrong with it.
The market will sort itself out -- whether it's people leaving tips (not a bad idea -- it works for many street musicians) or publishing as Kindle downloads or whatever.
Meanwhile -- although I'm sure there are any number of reasons to write and throw your product out into the cloud -- ego, catharsis, just plain fun -- for me it provides at least a little goal. Knowing someone else will see the work for free can be way better than just reading the lastest in a string of rejection letters. And when you get that lillte kudo -- or a favorites link, well.
Finally, as someone has already mentioned, if you are a writer, however you choose to define that term, you just MUST write. It's like food or sleep or sex. If it's been too long, well, there is a need to be satisfied. And who likes to always eat alone?
I agree with JK Brady that it's still possible to get paid to write. When I was in PR, I wrote (or rewrote or edited) absolutely everything for my company. I provided content for the company website. I was decently compensated. When I went freelance, I wrote content for annual reports, for websites, for brochures, for advertisements. Again, I was well-paid. When I published two articles in the New York Times, I earned $500 for each. USA Today paid $750 for an op-ed and Newsweek paid $1,000. O Magazine is offering south of a grand for an upcoming article, as is AARP. I prefer writing for these venues to writing website copy for Acme Corporation or ABC law firm so I don't do as many corporate jobs anymore. Then again, while one pays better than another, all pay better than HuffPo or my blog or OS. It's just that I have more fun here.
What generally doesn't pay well is writing you do for yourself, following your own muse unless you get really lucky and it turns out lots of people are just as in love with your muse as you are. You write something because you are driven to and hope people respond. And, frankly, they usually don't. Most novelists don't make any money because few people buy and read their novels.
You can whine that people don't appreciate you as an "artist" just as you can whine that, generally, people like mystery novels more than literary novels.