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Join NOW!Once the story was actually finished, and there was no money to be made, all ambition tied to it evaporated, and now I’m left pretty much where I began. Ruthlessly lazy, without much money, and stuck for the foreseeable future at an annoying day job. Like pretty much every other writer in the world, I […]
...moreIt’s no secret that writing doesn’t pay. Ann Bauer wants to talk about where the money comes from: In my opinion, we do an enormous “let them eat cake” disservice to our community when we obfuscate the circumstances that help us write, publish and in some way succeed…I do have a huge advantage over the writer […]
...moreWriting books has become a hobby for the wealthy, writes Toby Young over at the Telegraph. Writers’ incomes have dropped 29% since 2005, he points out, and even when writers are getting paid, it’s never enough: I wrote another book last year (What Every Parent Needs to Know), and this time I actually received a […]
...moreAt The Morning News, seven writers with full-time jobs talk about how they fit (or attempt to fit) writing time into their work weeks, and the general conclusion is: There isn’t an elegant solution to cramming a writing life into a non-writing life, just like there isn’t an elegant solution to the problem of trying […]
...moreThe arts don’t pay very well, and working as a professional in a creative field like writing, music, or film has grown more precarious. High student debt doesn’t help, but it might explain why almost a quarter of arts graduates end up in business management. Of working artists, 40% don’t have bachelors degrees. The organization […]
...moreIn an essay on Narrative.ly, Alison Gerber recounts the rather harrowing IRS audit of Minneapolis artist Venus DeMars: Sometimes the line between professional and amateur is a clear, bright one. But in the United States artists are, for the most part, just artists, moving in and out of day jobs and commercial work, employment and […]
...moreA British study has confirmed that professional writers aren’t making very much money, and worse, that earnings for writers have fallen 29% since 2005. A survey of 2,500 British authors found median annual income at just £11,000 ($18,800) and only 11.5% of authors were earning a living solely through writing. The Guardian has a full […]
...moreIt’s sometimes hard to imagine the life of the road-tarer or the elephant waste remover. Here’s to an unsung hero the world wouldn’t be the same without. Point is, no matter how long I been doing this or how I got into it people just think I grab any old thrift-shop rag and casually fold […]
...moreIf a novel depicted house sitters’ lives, its scenes would depict the complex relationship between the homeowner and sitter, the way trust is built between strangers in such an intimate setting as a home: how house keys are swapped, free food is provided or withheld. At the Paris Review, Aaron Gilbreath writes about his history of side jobs, […]
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Bobby J. Robby talks about labor issues, gender identity, and the perils of dating other dancers.
...moreThe biggest myth we are fed as artists is that we need to sustain ourselves solely on our art. This is ridiculous. Every artist has at some point in time had some other job. Some of them kept these jobs their entire lives. In the latter category: William Carlos Williams was a doctor in New […]
...moreWith writers, it’s usually neither rags to riches nor riches to rags. Marx had Engels, Austen had her family. Read this and rest assured: some cool people lived with their parents. Austen didn’t start out rich and she never got rich by writing excellent and even popular fiction, not by a long shot. She remained […]
...moreReading, writing and thinking are all tasks that are nearly impossible to cultivate while performing manual labor. As Plato first noted, when discussing education, “sleep and exercise are unpropitious to learning,” and therefore students should avoid intense exercise as they pursue educational endeavors. Writing is what Veblen would call “conspicuous consumption,” a task primarily done […]
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