A Writer's Tale

If a career in education isn’t right for you, look for any sort of job that might allow you extra blocks of free time. The fewer hours per day you need to work at the “real job,” the more time you can devote to writing. If you can earn enough money at some sort of part-time job (such as substitute teaching, construction work, “consulting,” office temporary work, etc.) so much the better.

It is probably best to avoid jobs that involve writing. (A lot of people might disagree with this, but it’s my opinion.) In many cases, the writing you do for your job will put an enormous strain on your urge to write fiction in your spare time. You’ve been writing all day. Probably the last thing you’ll want to do, after getting home from work, is to sit down in front of your computer for another hour or two.

The need to hold a “real job” is not entirely a bad thing.

Nonwriting jobs can be valuable to you as a writer beyond their function of providing a stable income.

You might want to seek out jobs that will provide you with colorful background material for your fiction. Some of the most successful novelists have been doctors, seamen, police officers, lawyers, and soldiers. But such jobs require a lot of time and dedication. They aren’t for everyone. Also, some of the most colorful jobs can get you maimed or killed.

No matter what sort of job you take in order to make ends meet, you’ll find that it offers you a lot of valuable experiences. You’ll learn the ins and outs of whatever business it might be.

And you’ll probably be forced into contact with people.

People!

People characters are at the center of everything you will ever ‘write. (They’ll also be your audience.) So pay close attention to everyone you meet at work. Learn their physical characteristics, their quirks, their charms and flaws. Then, when you sit down to write your fiction, use what you’ve learned about them.

Take full advantage of the situation. After you’ve given up the “real job,” you’ll no longer have such close contact with so many people. You’ll actually loose a great source of fresh material.

(However, you’ll be more than glad to lose most of it.)

Finally, you should try to avoid taking any job that involves you to any large extent intellectually or emotionally. Your job should not consume you. It’s something you do to make ends meet while you write. When you’re not actually on the job, you need to be able to shut it out, ignore it, leave it behind.

In a very real sense, you’ll be an imposter at the “real job.” You’re putting on a good show at being a clerk, a secretary, a teacher, a carpenter, a truck driver, an accountant, a computer repairman, a salesman, a lawyer, a doctor, a janitor, a guard, a cop…You should do a good job, but you’re an imposter and a spy you’re a writer.

On Money

NO ASPIRING WRITER LIKES TO HEAR THIS. I SURE DIDN’T. BUT IF YOU want to write fiction for a living, you will need another source of income.

Either find yourself a full-time job or marry yourself a working spouse unless you have plenty family money and don’t need to worry about income.

Though it is certainly possible to earn a living at the writer’s trade, the chances of making much money early in your career are very slim. Virtually non-existent.

First, be advised that you can’t earn a living by writing short stories. There aren’t enough markets. And the markets that do exist (anthologies and a few magazines) don’t pay much.

Unless you sell a story to a really top market (such a Playboy) you’ll be lucky to get more than a couple of hundred dollars for it.

Take a look at the math. If you’re incredibly good and prolific and write a story every two weeks and they all sell, you would have 26 stories over the course of a year. If every one of them sold for $200, you would be earning an annual income of $5,200. (At least you wouldn’t have to pay income tax.)

To earn a living, you must write novels.

Here is another tough truth: the first novel you write probably won’t sell. When you hear stories about a “first novel” that takes the literary world by storm, they’re referring to an author’s first published novel. It might be the second, third, or twelfth novel that the author actually wrote. Those earlier ones just weren’t fit to be published.

Almost nobody’s first attempt at writing a novel results in anything worth reading except maybe as a curiosity. (This truth wouldn’t necessarily apply to the first attempt at a novel by a seasoned poet, playwright, screenwriter, journalist, or short story writer.) Why bother to write the first novel if it won’t sell?

For one thing, there is a chance, however slim, that it might sell. For another, you have to write the first novel or you’ll never get down the line to the one that does sell.

It’s a step toward your destination. Without taking the first step, you just don’t get there at all.

Okay.

Let’s move on to your first novel that sells.