On writing and money (part two).
It’s tough to do your best work when you’re constantly worried about money. -LitHub
Last week, I wrote about the main characters from two novels: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser. Though they had distinctly different personalities, they both suffered tragic fates because of a common flaw, which “…can perhaps best be interpreted as dramas of dream versus reality, of ideal versus real, and of the inability of the respective protagonists to reconcile, or balance, the dialectic” (Kehl 219). They believed money would solve all their problems, that if they belonged to the upper echelon of society, everything would be perfect.
I was wondering the same thing as I walked to the mailbox to send out my rent check earlier this month. Lately, I’ve been waking up sweating. I’m worried about money — constantly. And unfortunately, writers don’t make money. Even if I realize my most cherished dream of being even a moderately successful writer, I’ll still be plagued with money troubles. LitHub wrote a wonderful six-part series titled “The Myth of the Middle Class Writer” that was honest about writing and money.
According to a 2022 Authors Guild survey of 5,699 published authors, the median gross pre-tax income of full-time, established authors was $25,000 per year, only $10,000 of which was from book-related sources. In contrast, in 1989, the median author income was $23,000, not adjusted for inflation. Of the Authors Guild’s respondents, 56 percent said they made extra income from events, ghost writing, teaching, and yes, journalism. At the same time, the rental market has climbed to new heights.
Writers aren’t making a ton of money and that fact coupled with inflation and rising prices of just about everything really brings that idea of the struggling/starving artist into the spotlight. But if this is a real problem for authors, how come no one’s writing about it? At least, there certainly aren’t modern authors addressing financial stressors and social class like Fitzgerald and Dresier did. According to LitHub, “It could certainly be the case that in modern America we simply do not notice how much money a person has, or how much they’re likely to come into. But this flies in the face of … most people’s experience of daily life. Because the truth is that while we don’t openly discuss how much money people have, we certainly spend a lot of time thinking about it.”
I know that’s true for me.
The article goes on to point out, “For instance, a friend once told me the easiest way to know if a college-educated person has rich parents is to ask if they have student loans. Does the MC in Leaving Atocha Station have student loans? Does Bunny in The Secret History have student loans? Which characters in Nathaniel P have student loans? This is a simple and extremely legible financial marker that one would expect to appear routinely in novels, but it doesn’t.”
Is not writing about money in fiction a kind of denial of its importance in the day-to-day life? A small act of rebellion? A willing choice to prefer the dream over reality? And if becoming an established writer is not going to solve my money woes, what should I do? Should I get a second job? My friend mentioned her place of business was looking for a hostess, and that would put me in the company of all different kinds of people, which would certainly help inspire the writing.
Right? Or am I romanticizing everything again? According to this LitHub article, that was partly inspired by “Bad Waitress” by Becca Schuh, it’s becoming more and more common for writers to scratch a living in the service industry. “I was trying to cultivate an image of the person I wanted to become. A waitress at a shitty IHOP that’s not even in San Diego proper isn’t much to start adulthood from. But a waitress at a shitty IHOP that’s not even in San Diego who’s definitely for sure going to be a writer—well, it’s the start of a story.”
I picked teaching as my career because I love reading and writing, the students are clever and engaging, and because I thought the schedule gave me plenty of time to write. For the most part, that’s entirely true. But teaching exhausts me mentally and physically, and it can be a struggle to find the motivation or the inspiration to write. And teaching doesn’t necessarily pay all the bills. “Waitressing funded my rent and bills and food and clothes so I could spend the time that was leftover figuring out how to be a writer.” This falls right in line with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs; a writer cannot be creative if she’s worried about where her next meal is coming from. Granted I’m not that destitute, but I’m definitely not living in the lap of luxury either.
At worst, my dream of being an established writer is not everything I’ve built it up to be in my mind. At best, I keep on keepin’ on and see what happens. Because there is an undeniable part of me that argues against the statistics and even what I know to be true. I use extreme examples to validate my almost delusional level of hope (and not just in my writing life). Like, Stephen King was living in a trailer and unable to afford electricity when Carrie became the phenomenon that it did. So all we can do is keep trying. Right?
*Article recommendation: https://lithub.com/writing-as-labor-doing-more-with-less-together/*
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