Extras: On Writing "Full-Time"

More stuff, because I like you people

It’s always a little bit awkward when people ask me if I write full-time…. not that this happens often, since I rarely people. But usually what they mean is some variation of the following:

• Do you have a day job?

• Is this just a hobby, or some kind of serious pursuit?

• Are you good enough to make real money at this?

• Are you some loser who is ‘writing a book’ for years and years on end, but in fact are doing fuck-all and being a big dramatic artiste about it?

• Have you ‘made it’? Are you living the dream? (Also, if I do exactly what you do, will I be able to make it too?)

Personally, I think the last one looks a lot like the second last one, but let’s take these questions in order.

Do I have a day job?

No. More specifically, not anymore. Not in some time, actually.

Before I pursued the idea of ‘being a writer’ in any serious way, I pursued the idea of ‘not having a job while also being able to feed myself and not being dependent on anyone and living in some degree of comfort.’

To some degree, I figured that this would allow me time to actually write, because back then I was under the delusion that the reason I wasn’t writing was that I had a job and it took up way too much time and mental energy to write. It’s true that my job took up too much time and mental energy, but when I no longer had a job and still struggled to sit down and write… well, clearly it wasn’t the job.

But also, as wild as the idea of being financially independent was, it was at least a simple numbers game: save, invest, wait. (The waiting part is the shitty bit, especially since the jobs that pay more were the ones I find more soul-destroying.) It wasn’t a question of whether I was good enough to be a writer, or if I could actually write a book that could get published and sell.

It seemed possible in way that writing a successful book did not: even though I hoped a successful book would be my shortcut out of job-hell. This is laughable to anyone who knows anything about what writers make from book sales.

That said, living on a barebones budget and having a job I didn’t like for twenty years seemed very awful too. I know there are people out there who like the routine and steady paycheque of it all, but personally I resent expectations like “show up every day” and “do what you’re supposed to do.”

Anyway, I took a detour into working with my parents in commercial real estate investment, and as much as I love my life now, working with my mother was a choice.

Is this just a hobby, or some kind of serious pursuit?

I genuinely can’t think of any creative writers who are strictly hobbyists. I know writers who write alongside other work that they do. I know writers who are afraid to take themselves seriously as writers and therefore call it a hobby. But I don’t think I know any writers who consider writing a leisurely pursuit done for pleasure. It’s not like playing Scrabble.

Anyway, this is dumb question and the people who think this way about other people’s creative work are also dumb, and how many people did I just insult right now? Feel free to debate me in the comments.

But for most creative writers I know, writing is the thing we do that feeds our soul, that makes us feel more connected to ourselves, it allows us to exist in the world. It’s a calling, even if we might a wee bit pretentious to say that out loud.

That it is a calling doesn’t mean that we’re going to be recognized or financially enriched for it, but that is because the world is stupid like that.

Are you good enough to make real money at this?

Of course I am, but that doesn’t mean that I am making real money at this.

This gets into that weird intersection of Art and Capitalism, and the idea that if you are really good, the world will pay you what you are worth, which then gets into the whole thing about publishing and money as validation for doing this.

First of all, the world doesn’t pay you what you are worth. I mean, it certainly doesn’t pay me what I am worth.

The pandemic exposed us to the millions and millions of people who are essential to the day-to-day functioning of our lives and don’t get paid anything close to what they are worth. (Shout out to daycare teachers, when the world shut down, I missed you the most.)

The ongoing Writers Strike has shown us that here in the so-called Golden Age of Television, there are many, many writers working on hit shows that are getting paid nothing from the big streaming platforms of the world. Meanwhile, idiots like Elon Musk, the guy who made the submersible that imploded, and the Sackler family make billions. (I finally watched Dopesick, check it out if you want to really hate some rich dudes and feel terrible about state of the world: it’s excellent, but also fuuuuck.)

I think we can safely dispense with the idea that the worth or value of our creative work has anything to do with money.

But it’s a hard one to undo, because it so deeply underpins the world where most of us live. As I write this, I keep thinking I should scroll up and insert but let me be clear, I have made real money for this as a way to assure you all that I am a genuine Writer™ and not some hack.

I have noticed that the way people (not usually other writers) talk to me about writing changes when they know I have made dolla billz.

So yeah, I get the idea of using it as validation, but you know, just because you can’t make a living from it, doesn’t mean you aren’t a Real Writer. It’s the world’s fault for not valuing you enough.

Are you some loser who is ‘writing a book’ for years and years on end, but in fact are doing fuck-all and being a big dramatic artiste about it?

This one is interesting because of the sexism. Warning, cishet relationship assumptions incoming.

I know women who are or who have financially supported the men they were partnered with, who were ‘writing a book’ and then never, like, wrote anything, or wrote some shitty self-publishing thing that sold like three copies, two of which were to his mom.

Or these men were other artists of some kind, who were being financially, emotionally and creatively supported by women. Some of these women had or would have had creative careers of their own, but those are tough to put time and energy into when you’re expending it all on some other person, who may or may not (more often not, in so far as I’ve seen) appreciate it.

I also know women who write who are financially supported by male partners, but these women are usually also raising the children and doing the bulk of the housework, whereas when things are the other way, it seems like the women doing all the domestic tasks, carrying the financial load, and somehow there’s some dude who is allegedly creating art.

So yes, it’s a trope, it’s a cliche, it featured in the movie Sliding Doors with Gwyneth Paltrow back when she did movies instead of selling marble eggs to stick up your vagina. But it also happens in real life, and it very much annoys me, a little bit because damn, that sounds cushy, how do I get this lifestyle? but mostly because patriarchy.

Still, those of you who are familiar with my ongoing “Things I did instead of writing” series from Instagram may realize that I often resemble the doing fuck-all bit, but I’m not nearly so much of a douchebag about it.

But getting up every day and being able to do whatever I want? Living the dream, man. Or at least, I will be when the kids are older. Living the dream-lite.

Have you ‘made it’? Are you living the dream? (Also, if I do exactly what you do, will I be able to make it too?)

I think a lot of us have had this assumption that we’ve made it as an artist when we can entirely support ourselves by through our creative pursuits.

And the reality of it is, a lot of artists struggle to do this, even if they are well-known and well-established. Many may be scrambling financially, or not exactly living in comfort, or are making the bulk of their living income through grants, teaching, part-time work, related fields like editing, freelancing, a dribble of social media income, etc.

It’s not exactly a life of quietly contemplating the next word without worry. I mean yes, it used to be more possible, and you will probably find people who got into this decades ago were able to make it work more easily. But it’s an increasingly tough environment.

Still, I can see how this may still look like living the dream, because so many people do feel similarly to me about jobs, and would love to dispense with their 9-5, and being to spend the whole day, every day, thinking about their art. Even if it’s through paid work that’s only kinda sorta related to their art; it still seems better than, say, writing marketing copy for life insurance software. (That was my last corporate job. It’s less fun than it sounds.)

But the counter to this is, it is much easier to create art when you are not worried about where your next meal is coming from, if you have a roof over your head that is not in danger of being taken away from you, if you can weather a financial mishap with an ‘well, this sucks’ instead of falling deeper into a hole that you have no hope of getting out of.

(Yes, yes, USA, health insurance, that is also a big one… I’m in Canada, and as much as our threadbare healthcare is being dismantled by private interests, life is still easier because it exists, even if it’s barely hanging on, fuck you Doug Ford.)

In any case, there is not a singular path to making this work. I could tell you everything that I did to get to where I am, but how I got here was a lucky confluence of timing and circumstance and a stubborn desire never to work for other people again. You have to figure this one out for yourself, and doing that might mean you have to be brave and take some risks or say no to things that everyone expects you do say yes to.

But at the same time, you are not less of an artist because you choose to keep the financial security advantages of a day job—it’s hard to juggle both, for sure. But doing only one of these is a different kind of hard.

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I know my earlier column, You Are Not A Story Factory, resonated with a lot of people (you guys, I literally had to turn off ‘like’ notifications) and I think it’s because if we look around us for advice on how to be able to do this delightful creative thing all the time without having to spend so much of our time in that boring hell known as The Workplace… well, the advice seems to be all about how to be a content factory instead of, like, a human being with some stuff to say.

Because factories make consistent money, and since we are in the Monetizing Content Era, it seems to fit into an idea of do more, write more, post more, interact of your socials more, engage more, and oh yeah, be excellent always.

That isn’t a creative life. That is a grind. That is a job, that thing you might be trying to get away from so that you can have a creative life and not grind… this is feeling very O. Henry, Gift of the Magi.

Also, let’s not forget that factory workers get replaces by automation and robots. (I’m looking at you ChatGPT.) If you are trying to being a human bot, you are in for a rough time.

Respect your art enough to let it be art. If you are able to do that in a commercially viable way that you are able to sustain over the long haul, that’s awesome. Amazing. But your inability to make that happen is not a judgment on the value of your art, or an invalidation of your desire to be an artist.

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Also, since we are in a Normalizing Stuff Era, can we normalize not asking this question? If someone writes, they write. Enough said.

It’ll be pretty clear if they are some kind of a douchebag without making a hamfisted attempt at sussing out the financial realities of their art.