Jobbing writers

 

Louisa May Alcott plodded along making a reasonable living as a writer and then wrote Little Women  - somewhat reluctantly, actually.  She made so much money form that book, and then quite a bit more as well from its sequels, that she was able to invest and be generous enough not to foreclose on a mortgage when the people living in the mortgaged property could not afford to pay her.

Philip Pullman, David Almond, and Stephen King worked for years at their craft before they became rich and famous. 

Charles Dickens was his own editor for many years and several of his works appeared as serials in a journal he edited. He had to work hard to meet tough deadlines in order to keep the cash flowing. There was quite a bit of the business man about him as there was with our friend William Shakespeare. It neither case was it just about being a good writer.  

There are many writers who get by on low earnings from writing, plus some other activities, writerly or not, that help them to pay the rent or mortgage and keep themselves and their families fed and clothed. They work gladly this way because it enables them to send much of their time writing.

In fact, we don’t want more than “nourishment, shelter and companionship” and we like to create “stories (that) are the thing we need most in the world.”  (Quote from Philip Pullman)

And my own story?

Well, I’ve retired from the day job now though I still do a little work for my last employer, the University of Salford. Whilst there I was very involved with writing, so this was in effect “jobbing writing”. I taught creative writing to undergraduate and post-graduate students.  My “research” was more of my own writing and some examination of that process which manifested as academic papers and talks at conferences.

I now have a pension made up of my teaching pension, my university pension (which is not bad as I became a senior lecturer on which my final salary pension was based, though the last six months was average salary) and the state pension. I also work as an editor and publisher, though I probably spend more money on the latter than I earn as I’m always keen that the writers and our freelance editors and designers get a reasonable payment.

In a way then, I’m free to write what I want and don’t have to worry about my writing being commercial enough. I still want it to be the best that it can be and I still want the recognition.

Getting there? Plodding my way through jobbing writing? I’m selling a few books through my own imprints and ones I have with other imprints. I’m getting some pleasing reviews but I’d like a few more.  I still get tons of rejections but also a respectable number of acceptances, shortlistings and longlistings.  

 I’m finding more and more that when I submit to competitions and calls for submission that have themes I’m getting at least longlisted. So, perhaps I’m working towards a trend after all. But there are lots of themes to choose from.  

I have reason to believe that my writing is getting better because each time it’s rejected I find a way to improve it before I submit the next time.  This isn’t sloppiness; the work is always the best it can be at the time I submit. It’s just that I’ve got better in the meantime.  Hooray!

So, we plod on. We jobbing writers.   

How Writers Earn Money

At what point should writers be paid? Do they qualify for the job like a doctor or a teacher does, after a lengthy apprentice and is part of what they are paid for all those years of training?

Parallels with other professions

I used to be a language teacher and it looked to many as if I worked 9.00 until 3.30 39 weeks a year.  Of course, that isn’t really true: teaching weeks tended to involve 52 hours’ work and some work carried on during the holidays. I had to keep my languages up also. This meant going abroad and reading books and watching films in other languages. Or were those leisure activities? Did it ever really stop?

It is similar for me now as a writer. Is reading work? Or thinking about my plot and characters as I drive, cook or iron? Or perhaps watching and critiquing TV dramas?

Or are we rather like those who work in the catering and beauty industries? The basic wage (the advance or the fee) is very small so we rely on tips to bolster our income (royalties, PLR and ALCS payments, and revenue from advertising)?

Content cannot be free

One of my books has been downloaded several thousand times from a site that is displaying it illegally. It’s getting good reviews, mind. My publisher has requested its removal twice. It has been removed but up it has popped again. I’d be at least £2000 better off if those people who had downloaded it had bought a copy of the book or borrowed it from the library. There is still the impression that if something is available electronically it should be free.

No guys, people who write, produce music and make films, need to eat, be clothed and be sheltered.  They also need some money in order to be able to carry on producing content.

But for goodness sake, IT people, shouldn’t it be the easiest thing in the world to be fair to everyone? Charge a low rate for the content – there are fewer overheads, no stock to carry or ship - yet pay enough so that the years of experience and hours of work are rewarded – including those of the IT experts?

Sidelines

Writers often do other things to keep the cash flowing. Here are a few examples:

• Offer  readings. Again there is a strong parallel here with the music industry; the live performance is a type of value-added commodity
• Edit others And why not? It’s hard, perhaps impossible, to edit yourself.
• Teach creative writing - hopefully because they have something to offer and not because “those who can’t, teach”. In fact, most people who teach creative writing accelerate their own learning as they teach. There is, anyway, a sort of obligation for those who can to pass it on.

The point is, even those who are recognised as writers who produce something worth reading often have to supplement what they earn directly from their writing by earning something from extra activities.

Who should write?

Anyone who writes is a writer. Only the very best, so it seems, however, are allowed to earn purely from writing. And many who eventually do serve that long apprenticeship. Charles Dickens, Louisa May Alcott, and more recently David Almond and Philip Pullman, worked as jobbing writers before they found the big time. J K Rowling may seem to have struck gold at the first attempt but she had a long creative development and a few hard knocks first. 

The Dutch offering state benefits to any artist who has sold anything in the last five years and the Irish exempting writers from tax recognise this a little.

It is hard, but anyone who truly wants to get there can, if that person perseveres. But it’s a big if. It is certainly not easy. We have to pass the gatekeepers. It’s probably going to be a little easier if you have some talent and a heck of a lot of self-discipline.

Who are the gatekeepers?

If you are published traditionally, then agents and editors are quite significant. Then come the booksellers, the reviewers and the general public.

Anyone can self-publish directly to the Internet. Then the popularity of the writer can have an influence on what is read and what is liked. We all become gatekeepers as we select, recommend and comment. The writers themselves play a role as they ensure a fine balance between maintaining visibility and overloading others with information about their texts.    

Can it be done?

Get it all right and eventually you may be allowed to spend your time writing and doing activities related to it. Pass all of the gatekeepers and you may even eventually earn enough that you do the secondary activities out of a sense of moral obligation rather than because you need the money.

Above all else, you must, of course, write brilliantly.     

              

Writers and Time

I tried to write 1,000 words a day. I mainly managed it – at the time when I was a full-time teacher and had young children. A few years in I decided to do an MA in Writing for Children.  By then my little children were teenagers, with all that that brings along, and I was Head of Modern Languages at a quite difficult comprehensive. The writing was a little more demanding because it had two masters: the academy and the industry. Nevertheless, I managed to write a lot: MA assignments, competition entries, and some projects of my own. This happened after 10 p.m. on week days, at weekends and during the school holidays.  

I eventually got published and decided to give up the day job, though still did supply teaching and one-to-one tuition. One book deal led me to upping my daily quota to 2,000 words. I now have over 50 works in print and could class myself as a full-time writer. I have a job as a lecturer in creative writing because of my writing. I still aim at 2,000 words or two hours writing a day. I’ve actually found that even with all the time in the world, I can rarely do more than this. After the first two hours, the energy flags. Because of the other things a writer has to do – and most of what I do for the university can be described as just that – there sometimes isn’t time to do the actual writing.

Many writers recognise this. Jacqueline Wilson now often writes on the train, Alan Gibbons in hotel rooms and Philip Pullman misses his earlier routine of writing for a couple of hours after a busy day teaching.

I know many writers, in fact, who have given up the day job and are now writing less than they did before. It’s almost as if they needed the other routines of their lives to make this one stick. Maybe there is also an element of now having less to write about as they have less contact with the outside world.

So, getting published isn’t the golden ticket to a life where you stay cocooned in your writer’s room, sending the works electronically and watching money being transferred into your bank account. It often means you’ve got to get out there, get behind your book and help sell it, and that can sometimes put a squeeze on your writing time. We have to learn even more self-discipline now. We must be able to write in any circumstance and to drop into writing mode without difficulty after a busy time doing other things. We may no longer have the luxury of a room of our own and of an uncluttered mind that we had before we were published.

                            

Age-banding or not

There is quite a lot of debate about this at the moment. Should we put the age of the reader on the book? Straight away, I see a problem. Who is the reader and which of their many ages do we mean? Reading age rarely matches biological age, and then there is mental, emotional and spiritual age to contend with. The combination of these “ages” plus children’s personal tastes will determine which sorts of books they might choose – or even more likely, have chosen for them by an involved adult. That all important cover, blurb and first page will give even more information. But if the child / adult suddenly sees that this book is suitable for 6-8 and they are five or nine yet in every other way the book really appeals, a potential reader is lost. How devastating for the twelve-year-old slow reader, perhaps also a little emotionally immature, to find the book that (s)he finds palatable is meant for nine-year-olds.

This is a world away from general cataloguing and shelving that already exists, and that can be problematic enough. Just think, in a bookshop, you start off at what has roughly indicated as your age group and you move along the shelves to find something harder or easier. You don’t notice, probably, because you’re short and the labels are up high on the shelves that you’ve wandered out of your zone.

Interestingly, it is Philip Pullman who is leading the anti-age banding campaign. Just think, how would you label His Dark Materials trilogy? I’ve said in my Ph D thesis that it is a Young Adult novel. It has the feeling of quest about it that many Young Adult novels do. Lyra and Will are young adults. Many young adults have read and enjoyed it. Yet is has been read and enjoyed by younger people – despite a rather high reading age register. Many adults have also enjoyed it. So, which age band do we put it into and would that put readers from other groups off?