{"id":1539,"date":"2009-07-01T12:25:07","date_gmt":"2009-07-01T17:25:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/mojo\/?p=1539"},"modified":"2025-07-25T20:29:35","modified_gmt":"2025-07-26T01:29:35","slug":"writers-accept-it-and-keep-going","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/blog\/writers-accept-it-and-keep-going\/","title":{"rendered":"Writers: Accept it and keep going. Or not."},"content":{"rendered":"

Keep your day job.<\/p>\n

Accept that you will not be able to quit your day job.<\/p>\n

Regardless how much weeping and wailing and gnashing of the teeth goes on around the web about monetizing art, if you\u2019re a writer not already pulling income that allows writing to be your day job, just deal with the fact that you probably aren\u2019t going to.<\/p>\n

In my mind, making peace with the fact that you have to keep your day job is a lot easier than spending all your creative energy to resent it. Ask me how I know.<\/p>\n

Today, right now, as I look over the fiction writer landscape on the web, I see lots of writers I can slot into roughly five categories:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The unpublished authors<\/strong> seeking publication via the normal route (query\/reject\/revise\/repeat). They\u2019re hustling to get an agent\u2019s attention, and possibly spending money on ink\/toner, paper, envelopes, and postage to do so. They aren\u2019t earning any money.<\/li>\n
  2. The midlist authors<\/strong> having to prove their numbers in order to get their next book contract, which means they have to hustle and market and fight to make sure people know their books exist (especially if they aren\u2019t in Wal-Mart or Target). They probably aren\u2019t earning enough to write full time.<\/li>\n
  3. The self-published authors<\/strong> having to fight just to let people know they and their work exists. They probably aren\u2019t earning enough to pay the cost of producing their book(s), much less earn a living.<\/li>\n
  4. The career category authors<\/strong> (Harlequin\/Silhouette<\/a>) and e-published romance authors (Samhain<\/a>, LooseId<\/a>, Ellora\u2019s Cave<\/a>), a good portion of whom can earn a fairly decent living cranking out the books, but there\u2019s a catch: Putting out enough books to make that kind of living has to be grueling. At least, it would be for me. YMMV. The advantage to e-publishing over career category publishing, though, is that your titles never go out of print and you have A) time to build a backlist and B) your backlist is forever available to any late-night shoppers with a credit card.<\/li>\n
  5. The A- and B-list authors<\/strong> who have pressures of their own, I\u2019m sure, to which I am not privy. This includes anyone who may (if they choose to) write only one book per year or fewer and earn a comfortable living doing so.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Now, I\u2019m obviously #3, except that I\u2019m doing okay: Not enough to quit doing my day job, but enough to bear out the investment of time and money. (See my Six-Year Plan<\/a>.) However, my goal is the same as the e-published authors: Build the backlist and invest in the future.<\/p>\n

    I hate my day job. I really do. Yeah, it\u2019s my own business but I hate the work, mostly because I\u2019ve been doing it or something similar for years. It\u2019s easier now that I have a couple of decent clients, but the work remains. I fight an uphill battle every day to Just Do It, but do it I must. Some days I\u2019m more successful than others.<\/p>\n

    But the explosion of free versus paid writing that has kind of ballooned lately with Chris Anderson\u2019s book Free<\/em><\/a>, and Malcolm Gladwell\u2019s review of that book<\/a> in the New Yorker<\/em> only reinforces the necessity of resigning myself to the fact that I must have a day job.<\/p>\n

    For now.<\/p>\n

    The fact of the matter is that I have better odds of doing so than unpublished authors who hold out hope that they\u2019ll hit the lottery.<\/p>\n

    I also believe that I have better odds than those authors who have to prove every book via sales, even if all the stars are aligned against them (bad cover art, little marketing support, not being in Wal-Mart or Target); perhaps that myopic of me, but I\u2019m hustling for 100% profit, while they\u2019re hustling for 10% royalties and they\u2019re locked into questionable digital contracts (amongst other things).<\/p>\n

    As for career category writing, I couldn\u2019t do it (as stated above), especially within the restrictions of category. I know, because I tried, and missed the bullseye by half a hair every single time.<\/p>\n

    I also couldn\u2019t do e-publishing because there isn\u2019t one that would contract what I write, and I know that; I\u2019d rather not waste their time or mine. Also, see above for the grind in order to make money.<\/p>\n

    Basically, what I have on my side is control and time. I\u2019m going to write no matter what, and I\u2019m going to write what the stories I have to tell. I\u2019d rather put it out there for the opportunity to earn a little money than let it languish in the inboxes of agents who are also feeling the pinch<\/a>.<\/p>\n

    Yeah, I think I\u2019m in a really good position. I just can\u2019t quit my day job.<\/p>\n

    Yet.<\/p>\n

    I\u2019m slowly coming to terms with that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Keep your day job. Accept that you will not be able to quit your day job. Regardless how much weeping and wailing and gnashing of the teeth goes on around the web about monetizing art, if you\u2019re a writer not already pulling income that allows writing to be your day job, just deal with the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[544,546,87,559],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bookselling","category-marketing","category-money","category-traditional"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1539"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1539"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1539\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15110,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1539\/revisions\/15110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}