paying the rent
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Authors Demand Better Wages
Writers’ wages are down—as much as 30% since 2009. The Authors Guild is looking to change that in 2016. NPR spoke with the organization’s executive director, Mary Rasenberger, about pursuing better contracts from publishers and challenging court cases that have…
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Guildtalk #3: Lori Ostlund
For our ongoing Authors Guild series, Lori Ostlund speaks with Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Richard Russo about what it means to live a literary life in the 21st century.
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Paying the Bills
Electric Literature has an infographic of day jobs (originally posted on Adzuna) that both paid the bills and inspired writers to create some of their best work. The professions range from teacher (Stephen King, J.K. Rowling) to insurance officer (Kafka) to coffeehouse/jazz bar owner…
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How a Freelancer Prays
The writing life is hard, especially in the finance department and in the unstable nature of a freelancer’s status. Over at McSweeney’s, Marco Kaye writes a poignant representation of the inner monologue of the pleading, praying freelancer: Assist me in negotiating…
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We Think Writing Is Sexy
So I’m here to tell you that you can make a living as a writer, but you (might) have to let go of some notions of what “making a living as a writer” means. Over at Huffington Post Books, a…
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Unique Pageviews Don’t Pay Your Web Hosting Bill
Wil Wheaton created quite a fuss last month with an essay about Huffington Post’s request to republish an essay from his blog sans payment. When we called attention to a Salon article discussing paid versus unpaid creative work, Gawker had a…
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Exposure Doesn’t Pay Your Rent
Last week, author and Star Trek actor Wil Wheaton wrote an essay about the seven things he did to reboot his life. The Huffington Post, a publisher recently purchased by Verizon Communications for $4.4 billion, offered Wheaton the opportunity to…
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Like Mike
All the same, I’m as much a slave to necessity as anyone here. Fear and desire rule the heart. The paycheck has me leashed and basically obedient.
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No Way Out at the Welfare Office
How can it be that the system—the one you paid into for twenty-plus years— doesn’t have remedies for people like you—normally highly employable, but momentarily in need of assistance?
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A Novel Performance: Thirty Days in Seattle’s Central Library
Are writers really introverts, or do we hide our craft out of insecurity?
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Famous Writers with Weird Jobs
Did you know that Chuck Palahniuk worked as a bike messenger? Or that both Stephen King and Ken Kesey worked as janitors? Or that Charles Dickens labeled jars in a shoe factory? Electric Literature has a fun infographic detailing these odd…
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All Work and No Pay
At The New Republic, Phoebe Maltz Bovy reflects on the implications of the recent #TenThingsNotToSayToAWriter trend, taking note of two distinct categories of responses: those expressing outrage that someone assumed they do not make a living off of writing, and…