A while back, I wrote a fairly long piece on modern publishing and the attitudes of some modern writers and publishers regarding the market, especially towards other writers. In that post, I was pretty vicious towards the idea of running your writing as a business for two reasons: because, in the main, what I had encountered from those who choose to mix “making a living” with “writing” was snark and condescension, and because being treated momentarily as you have treated others is often one of the best ways to combat stubborn one-mindedness. It opens the mind.
However, what I did not mean to imply, and tried to make apparent with a number of clarifying statements within that entry (and also despite the tone of my rhetoric therein), was that running one’s creative writing as a business — ie: “selling out” as it was deliberately insultingly phrased in that entry — is a wrong or bad thing. Because what we were really talking about in that entry was differing priorities and the validity thereof, paying special attention to the dismissive perceptions of the most-common priority to those outside its adherent-group.
I’m not one to explain the other priority, however, because I’m not sympathetic to it; Ralph Mazza’s quote at the start of the prior referenced entry is what holds Truth for me. Enter author Brian Keene, who recently posted an entry to his blog how he makes a living at being a writer. It gives the flip-side of the perspective about running your writing as a business, both why you might do so and what it requires of you. And (notably for what it is and the view it is espousing) it does so without talking down to or relegating to a lesser category any author who chooses not to take the business approach to their writing.
It does not sneeringly call them hobbyists or strut around, nose-in-the-air, holding forth that anyone who does not write for this reason and in this manner will either wake up or fade away, nor treat them as lesser authors.
Mr. Keene simply compares writing-as-a-business to working in a foundry making molds, being paid for both an acceptable quality and a given and necessary quantity. He notes that becoming lost in the romanticism of creation means you will not be able to pay your bills and will lose your job, because you will not be able to create a living wage as intended. So if your priority is making a definite livable income in our modern economic system from what you’re doing, you can not prioritize the craft aspect of the work. You won’t produce enough and you won’t be paid enough because you can’t worry about quality: “good enough” has to be good enough. You can’t do shoddy work, either, because that won’t sell, but your concern is getting the most acceptable work done in the least amount of time so you aren’t fired, get paid, and earn enough to make a living. That’s your priority.
But the other side to this is that there is nothing wrong with romanticism, it is not the mark of a lesser writer or a naive and immature mindset, if your goal is not “making a livable income from what you’re doing”. In that scenario quality becomes the main concern; “good enough” is not good enough because quantity and profit are not central to your goals. You can stop the line to fix an issue and nevermind it means you won’t meet your production quota for the day (because you don’t have one). Of course, this isn’t to say you will never make money or even a living wage from this work, it is possible you might, but that isn’t your priority. You aren’t thinking about that.
Unfortunately, among some writers there is a disconnection between these two priorities in terms of being equally valid. They think if you don’t do it the business way, you’re doing it “wrong” or you “aren’t serious” or your work isn’t “worthwhile” or “valuable” (or even that you “are a clueless idiot”) and so forth; craft-focused writers are relegated to some other group of non-serious non-professionals who don’t understand the realities that must be catered to by the true author.
Sadly, that perception arises from a bit of invisible cultural indoctrination regarding the way individuals in our society view money and profit and how that relates to what we do with our time. Our culture teaches that something that doesn’t make money or as much money as some other thing is less valuable, less worthwhile, less important, or even less well-crafted. For those people who think that way, the only response that might make it through the cultural programming that wealth is the penultimate measure of value is that it isn’t always about the money. And maybe they can understand that. Or maybe they’ll shrug and continue thinking it has to be.
Lucikly, I found author Robert Walker recently posted an old note of his that speaks clearly to this same issue from the craft perspective, and how and why a non-business priority is as valid and why you might choose it:
“Money comes and goes. Why should what I do with myself, with my time, with my life, always be dictated by money, something that is essentially cultural, a part of a system that while it controlled me and still controls most people need not if I choose not to let it? Chasing ways to make money feels like running on a treadmill–you never really get anywhere. There’s something wrong when making money becomes primary, becomes the bottom line motivation for not only what we do but how we do it. How is that freedom? Even if you are not literally in chains, are you really free running on the treadmill? When money and the making of money becomes the primary and final arbiter of what we do and how we do it, something is drastically wrong.”
And that is it, for me. Because it is about how and why.
And I know some people are going to argue, “Well I want to do both! Both are important!” Sure, yes; we all do and yes they both are. No argument. But something is more important: when it comes down to the wire, what choice would you make? That’s what you have to ask. Are you more worried about getting the paycheck or making the work sing? Both? Yes, of course: but would you abandon the paycheck to make the work sing? Ok. There’s the point of decision. That’s what tells you where you sit.
I want to make art to make art. I don’t want to make art to make money. I don’t mind making money, certainly, but it is neither the reason for my engaging in the activity, nor especially do I want to get into the situation where money or the threat of not having it will influence either what I produce or how I go about producing it.
In the end, you can’t fall into the trap of letting other people dictate the validity of your priorities. What advice you should listen to depends solely on what you want to do with your writing, on which priority is most important to you. So if your goal is making money, fine! Good on you! Knowing what you’re doing and why you’re doing it is a fine thing.
But realize that goal is not necessarily everyone’s goal, and that it is as valid to view “doing something for the money as exactly backwards” as it is to view “doing something for the craft as being naive”. Yes, that means both those views are nonsense. Both are valid priorities, and one is not inherently or objectively a “better” priority than the other. It’s all about what your icing is.
I’ve spoken with authors who trapped themselves in and burned themselves out on mistaking their own priorities, confusing being a “professional” in the writing-as-a-business sense with being-a-good-writer. It was what they thought was expected and necessary and so forth to be taken seriously and to be a real author. And they suffered for it, even gave up writing altogether. I’ve been down the same path with my artwork and am only now recovering from that, and I encourage you not to do that to yourself: crafting is as valid a path, writing-for-a-living is not the only way to be a real author. Conversely, don’t craft–don’t engage with the idea of not making a living–if what you really want to do is make money. You’ll burn out and become bitter trying to juggle that confused priority, too.
It thus isn’t about “being a ’sell-out’” or “being a ‘realist’”, those are convenient tribalisms created by the small mind to positively reinforce it’s own identity through the stigmatization or denigration of some other group and viewpoint, by viewing one’s own tribe and its beliefs as inherently superior to or more special than that of others. Neither is inherently superior, because preference is not comparable.
What it comes down to: One author makes money writing and enjoys it to boot. Another author enjoys writing and makes money to boot.
They’re both professional authors. One wants to make a living. And one wants to write. And both are doing so via writing.