“What the profiles fail to reveal is that the literary apprenticeship is a lengthy one for the majority, that getting published at all is difficult, and to get paid enough to not do anything else but write is virtually a dream.
The supposed average money earned by a novelist is $10,000, but if that novel takes two years to write, then cut that in half, $5,000. As one online article trenchantly stated: ‘Most novelists and story writers would make more money if they worked full-time at McDonald’s.’”
At The Millions, The Writer Career Arc or Why We Love the Susan Boyle Story.
But I have to say if I worked full-time at McDonald’s I’d be dead by now, and by my own hand.
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That’s why many writers have day jobs, a.k.a., pay-the-bills jobs. But to give up writing? Not even an option for those driven to put pen to paper. It’s a calling, a vocation, that which nourishes our souls and sustains us spiritually and emotionally. Somehow Mickey D’s doesn’t fill that same void. Unbelievable, but true.
Writing is my career. But it depends mainly on what the true definition of a career is. Yes, we must all support ourselves somehow to pay the bills, but to me a career is the chosen vocation, regardless of how much money we bring in from other sources. That’s why they are called “day jobs”. That is more true today than at any time in the last century. I would not say I can rely on them to be there for me, either, so while I work and devote hours away from my calling, they cannot be called my career. Writing is what I am. The rest is just camouflage.
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