I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was a kid. I started with short stories in elementary school, graduated to comic books in middle school, then video games, then short films. Eventually, about midway through college, I returned to fiction.
In the past four years, I’ve kept up a steady stream of short stories (most disappointing, but some good). I kept writing once I left school, got married, got my first full-time job as a journalist, and had my first child.
In some ways right now, my life feels a little like the first bit of Stephen King’s On Writing—you know, where he’s squeezing in writing during lunch and in the laundry room at home, sending out stories and novels for publication, getting rejections, teaching for money to care for his children. But readers know his first book deal is on the horizon.
I, like many of my friends who are writers, am in that early period of every brilliant writer’s story: pre-success.
Of course, “pre” only makes sense if the story ends with success, and that’s not guaranteed. It’s not even likely.
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Here’s the challenge of writing for a living: you’re trying to convince people to pay money for something you make out of language. Keep in mind, people hear and read and speak meaningful words all the time for free, so you’d better be able to create something really special.
That’s hard.
I have the blessing to work at a job that pays me whether or not people read any given article I write. I’ve carefully crafted pieces that have gotten under a thousand hits (not good), and I’ve dashed off pieces in twenty minutes that stay on the front page of our website for weeks. It’s nice when the effort behind an article and its level of success coincide, but it’s certainly not necessary.
Eventually, though, I’d like to write things—fiction or otherwise—that people directly pay for. That’s a little more cutthroat than having a giant corporation (CBS, for instance) mediate the support of readers to all its writers, regardless of individual achievement. But, and perhaps this is just the American individualist in me, I think it’s also more meaningful.
Most of my friends who are writers haven’t been as lucky as I have—and getting my job was largely due to the luck of being in the right place at the right time. But we’re all struggling along this same path of creation, toward the goal of making something meaningful (which sometimes aligns with marketable, but shouldn’t be confused for it).
But of all of us, few if any will get a letter like Stephen King did, offering us a six-figure payday for one of our novels. Few will earn multi-book deals. Few will even publish in notable literary journals (which don’t pay much, anyway).
This reality is hard to look in the face sometimes, but it’s the best reminder we have that writing can’t be about money—not if you want to survive as a writer. It has to be about something more, about love of the craft, the art, the meaning. Without that, we’re not writers. We’re just articulate opportunists.
Dave Priest is a writer based in Louisville, KY. You can read his articles on pop culture, movies, and technology at CNET.com. You can read his fiction in print and online at Blotterature, Five on the Fifth, and Transect Magazine. Dave lives with his wife, Lindsey, and son, Idris. They are all awaiting the arrival of the fourth member of their little family in July.