Writing Doesn’t Pay
On the writing life, and the history of the leisure class
Good morning.
If you’re new here, welcome to Kindling. This is not one of my usual posts, but it is one that’s important to me. It’s a personal one, and something I care deeply about. If you have the time, please read to the end. And if you read and you’re moved by the words here, please feel free to pass it on.
Writers don’t make much money. Not most of them anyway. Even published authors usually have to keep their day jobs. I knew that. I’ve always known that. It’s why we get teary (or I do) when we listen to a success story, the breakout moment when an artist realizes they’re going to be able to quit their day job and devote themselves to their craft full time.
What I didn’t know is that most people working in creative industries come from families with money. I’m not talking Rockefeller money (I mean sometimes), but I am talking upper middle class money. The working class is and always has been vastly underrepresented in creative and philosophical circles. That reality goes back to times when old money dominated the salons and philosophical think tanks of France and Italy.
That makes sense doesn’t it? As stated above, the arts don’t pay much, especially when you’re starting out. I remember first looking into degrees I was interested in, and seeing that journalism jobs paid an average of $19,000 a year. I already had kids at the time. That kind of money with student loan bills tacked on wasn’t an option.
I made more than that when I was in my early twenties and worked at a specialty coffee shop. It was a neighborhood place with mostly regulars who came in once, twice, sometimes three times a day. At the time I was still figuring myself out. The world seemed open with endless possibilities, and I was trying on ideas for what I wanted my life to look like.
Our clientele were college graduates, upper middle class folks who could afford to spend twenty plus a day on coffee. They dressed in nice clothes and drove nice cars to office jobs. They spent their weekends running marathons and visiting museums. They knew the names of famous architects and had backpacked through Europe during the same years I was slinging lattes and choking on fumes from my shitty Honda on the way to work each day.
They seemed to idolize our job, maybe feeling some nostalgic pull back to their own youth, when they were strapped for cash and working in food service trying to make ends meet. We idolized it too, in spite of five hour rushes with no time to go to the bathroom, the skipped lunch breaks and grueling early mornings. It was fun. Until I got pregnant.
I was newly married, my husband and I both working minimum wage jobs when I found out I was going to have a baby. I was happy. Our life was paycheck to paycheck, but we were young and healthy. It was the recession, and we had just bought a foreclosed house in a dying neighborhood. We were fixing it up with discounted home improvement deals from Lowes (my husband worked there). We bought paint before we bought a dining table. Those first months, we ate sitting on the kitchen floor in a nearly empty house. So of course, a baby seemed like a logical next step. A little fast, but nothing we couldn’t handle.
(All the adults in the room snicker)
I’ll admit to you now what you all have guessed. It was harder than I thought it would be. The morning sickness came first, washing over me in waves as I arranged muffins and pastries on platters and ground coffee beans for the first customers of the day. Most mornings I would start the coffee, then run to the bathroom to throw up. Standing on my feet all day was hard as the months wore on. I suffered from sciatica in my third trimester and would have to crawl into the house after long shifts, unable to straighten my back for the first half hour or so.
Then my son came. I got a couple of months off, enough time to fall in love and never want to go anywhere again without him. But we needed the money. I cut my shifts in half, went down to part-time. It was still a lot. Waking up all night, getting up early to breastfeed, sneaking in pumping sessions in the single bathroom during morning rushes, driving home exhausted and finding him with my husband, also exhausted from endless consoling and coaxing. He wouldn’t take a bottle.
There is nothing like parenthood to wake you up to life’s realities, the impossibility of meeting even the most basic needs, like a full night of sleep after having a child. My world got smaller, my focus pin-holed on this one human. From that point on, everything was for him.
I found myself in a cycle that was familiar to me. I had watched my own mother do it my entire life. Working to scrape by. Working to survive. Squeezing money out of my day however I could. Exhausting myself to make things work. It’s nothing new or extraordinary. Even looking back, I don’t feel sad about that time. There was so much purpose and joy and optimism. So much to work for and towards. It propelled me into action in a way I am forever grateful for.
But, when I learned that most writers come from money? It made a hell of a lot of sense.
It isn’t just the connections that come with money, or being born “in the know.” That helps, no doubt. But I think it comes down to something even more practical. The reality of time. It takes a lot of time to get good at anything, but creative pursuits can be even more challenging. You can get paid for doing a job that you’re just okay at. You don’t get fired for not being the best.
Art is not that way. Most of us have some creative outlet. Maybe it’s knitting or cooking or refinishing thrift store furniture. Creativity is part of being human. Which means it’s hard to get paid to do it. The market is saturated. There are all these souls pouring out words and music and movement into the world. It’s a beautiful thing.
And a hard thing.
Hard for people who want more time to do it. Who feel like writing is in their bones. Ask anyone who has really made a go at a creative life. They get talked about (usually by relatives). There are long stretches in the lives of most successful writers when all they had was a heap of rejection slips, and very little to show for the hours spent dedicated to the page. It’s easy for the critic, inner or otherwise, to ask what the whole damn thing is for. If you aren’t accepting an award at a podium or hocking books to a big publisher, shouldn’t you just get on with it? Get a real job? Grow up?
Imagine if every writer and artist and musician took that seemingly wise advice. Picture the book shelves empty, the museum walls blank, blocks of marble uncarved, your music playlists sparse. Think of every time a story has touched your life in some way, and now imagine those storytellers silenced.
Do you know what? I bet many have been. I know they have. How many people have given up on a novel because they had to put food on the table? More than I’d like to think about.
So imagine my reaction when a little over a week ago, I read a post by a writer many of you familiar with the Substack fiction community will know, S.E. Reid. If you don’t know her through Notes, let me paint the picture. She is the person in every writer’s corner, rooting people on, celebrating every milestone, supporting each effort with kindness and grace. She started a newsletter dedicated to fiction on Substack where she amplifies other voices, helps writers connect with one another, and gives fiction writers a place to share their big news.
She also writes serialized fiction in her own newsletter,
. There, she has created a world in the fictionalized town of Ferris Island. And people have responded. They have been moved by her characters and swept up in her stories. She has grown quite a following of dedicated readers in our little corner of the internet. To many, she’s a cornerstone and an inspiration of what is possible if we dedicate ourselves to our craft, and invest in readers.She also has a non-fiction newsletter, and in this post, she vulnerably shared the struggles that come with pursuing writing full time.
The risk is big. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the odds, always against the creative. I hate that this is a reality, but it is one. There is a chasm that has to be crossed, a wide mouth that threatens to swallow you up when you step out into the world as a working writer and strike out on your own. It is every writer’s story.
I want her to make it.
I want so many more people to make it. I don’t want writers to give up. I want to give as many people a path to continue as I possibly can. So for today, for this one human in my writing community, I’m looking for any of my readers who are willing and able to do two things: throw five bucks her way via her tip jar below, and share her writing with any fiction lovers in your life. Invest in someone doing the work, pushing forward, making a way.
I hope life’s been treating you well. I’ve been unbelievably busy, but this week is looking lighter. I finished The Quiet Tenant, I’m working my way through Our Share of Night, and tackling some strange short stories in between. Happy reading humans and as always thanks for being here.
I suspect that most Substack fiction writers are here because we don't have the money or connections to make it in traditional publishing. That's not to say that traditional authors don't deserve their success because some do, but not as many as get published that way.
Or maybe I'm just jealous.
I loved reading your story, Shaina. I can identify strongly with many aspects. I had kids very early, long before I was ready and had to grow up fast. I think art has always been a mysterious, slippery trade open to everyone, but mostly dominated by the wealthy class OR the rare exceptional individuals who are relentless/crazy/talented enough to punch through the noise and captivate the attention of the masses. I feel as you do. We can only be better by lifting others. Thanks for this post.