Atomic Essay #18: “Nobody Makes A Living As A Writer”

My very last week of college, all my teachers ran through the same speech:

“Writing is thankless work. It’s hard. It doesn’t pay very well. When you do the math on the hours you spend writing and what you end up earning in the end, you’re making pennies on the dollar. Nobody makes a living as a writer.”

Eight years later (I graduated when I was 23, and I’m almost 31 now), I feel like this couldn’t be further from the truth.

If you write in a vacuum and only produce one piece of finished work every five years, then yes, it’s very hard to make a living as a writer.

If you want to write flowery fiction (a consolidating category) that imitates your favorite writers of old, and not push yourself creatively to create a new category of your own, then yes, it’s very hard to make a living as a writer.

If you choose to invest zero time and energy into learning the business side of publishing, then yes, it’s very hard to make a living as a writer.

If you refuse to acknowledge the power of the internet and use real-time feedback and data to help you decide what to write next to best engage the audiences you want to reach, then yes, it’s very hard to make a living as a writer.

If you continue to think that “only authors who publish with major publishing houses are real writers,” giving up 90%+ ownership in what you create for a paltry advance, then yes, it’s very hard to make a living as a writer.

If you only define “making a living as a writer” by one metric (being book sales) and refuse to monetize your talents in other ways, then yes, it’s very hard to make a living as a writer.

When I graduated from college, I entered the real world thinking in order for me to do what I loved, I would need to live a life of poverty.

I’ve since discovered the complete opposite.

Never in history has it been easier to make a living as a writer.