Don't be paralyzed by what to write about. Start from what bothers you most at the moment. If it's your socks, then start writing about it.
— Ksenia Anske (@kseniaanske) September 11, 2014
What’s bothering me at the moment? Funny you should ask….
A little over four and a half years ago, I left my job at Progressive Insurance to see if I could make a living off my writing. I was tired of playing the corporate game and answering to people I didn’t respect. Surely, I thought, my talent, wit, and indisputable brilliance would take me far. How could it not?
Yeah, about that….
What I’ve learned is that making a living as a writer, or really through virtually any creative pursuit, is a phenomenally difficult thing to do. We live in an era that has almost completely devalued creative pursuits. Oh, we still love music, and some of us still read…but in general, creative passion and a $1.00 might get you a cup of coffee at your local Waffle House. These days, the market is glutted with people who call themselves writers. The problem is that many think they can write…but few actually can. Because of the oversupply of writers, many are willing to provide content for next to nothing. For every Steven King or J.K. Rowling, there are thousands upon thousands of scribes like myself who’d consider themselves fortunate to get a check of any size. So far this year, I’ve made $162.00…which is $162.00 more than I made last year.
A few years ago, I was offered blogging gigs by the L.A. Times and Washington Post. There was just one little catch- they couldn’t (or didn’t feel the need to) pay me. No, I’m not Thomas Friedman or E.J. Dionne…but surely, I thought, my contributions should generate at least a modicum of compensation. In the end, I declined to provide free content to very profitable media companies. I don’t think I was being at all unreasonable, though I suspect the editors snickered at my naive insistence on compensation…and then offered the gig to someone willing to write for the “exposure.”
Was I short-sighted? Perhaps, but I remembered reading something written by someone fortunate enough to make a living off his writing. I have to paraphrase what he had to say, but it went something like this:
If you’re providing content for free because you think you’re getting “exposure,” then f—k you. Your willingness to work for nothing makes it that much harder for me to provide for my family. When writers are willing to work for nothing more than the “promise” of “exposure,” you’re taking food off my child’s plate.
Kinda hard to argue with that, eh?
I never expected that I’d get rich off my writing, but I did think I’d be able to make something resembling a living. Looking back, I was operating on faith, hope, and more than my fair share of naiveté. Frankly, I might have had a better chance of being an NBA point guard or a goalkeeper in the English Premier League. I’m not going to cry in my beer, because the dream hasn’t died; it’s just been tempered in the crucible of cold, hard reality. I still write…I just don’t get paid for it.
The truth is that I may never make a living stringing together complete sentences. That’s not to belittle my passion or talent, but creative pursuits are so devalued today that there’s no way I could recommend writing as a career to anyone. It’s not just writers experiencing this problem. I have a friend who’s a musician, and his label’s been jerking him and his band around for the better part of two years. In the meantime, they have bills to pay and mouths to feed.
I feel like Kurt Vonnegut right now: “When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth.”
— Ksenia Anske (@kseniaanske) September 11, 2014How can a creative person pursue their art with any hope of being able to support themselves? I wish I knew the answer to that question, because I’ve got nothing. Fortunately, I have my blog, which provides an outlet for my passion and allows me to keep my hand in the game. I still call myself a writer, though my income is generated by more prosaic, non-artistic pursuits- what some refer to as a “job.” Yeah, it kinda sucks sometimes, but you do what you have to do, right? Things could be a whole lot worse.
I suspect I’ll keep writing ‘til someone pries my keyboard from my cold, dead fingers. For now, I console myself with the knowledge that in 13 years, I’ve developed a worldwide audience, something that still blows my mind. Someone may be reading this in an Internet cafe in Vilnius, Lithuania. I’ll never meet that person, and the odds are pretty good that I may never make it to Vilnius in my lifetime (though I’d like to). Just knowing that people around the world read my writing is pretty humbling…and for now that will have to do. As I said, things could be worse.
That said, if anyone harbors a desire to write me a check…I have a pen if you need one.
