This last week marked my tenth anniversary as a working writer. I wrote before that point, of course, and I even got paid for it from time to time, but I time my professional life from the date I walked in the door of the Fresno Bee in September of 1991 and said "I start work today." They gave me a photo ID, a desk and a paycheck (the paycheck actually came two weeks later. But you know what I mean). Ta da, I was a real live working writer.
Ten years later, I still haven't done anything else to make money—including during the last three and a half years, in which I've been a freelance writer, a sure second job magnet if there ever was one. My career has been a nice combination of being lucky and being good, and while I prefer being the latter, I don't turn my nose up at the former, either. I'm not proud. I'll take luck when I can get it.
However I've managed it, ten years of writing—on staff and freelance, for print, magazines, online and in books, and on just about every topic possible—is enough time to note some general observations about the writing life. So here they are: Ten Things I've Learned About Writing From Ten Years of Doing It. These are in no particular order, incidentally.
1. If you're not confident, you're dead meat.
Beyond the fact that whiny writers suck, being confident is your road to cash. I charge a hefty amount per hour and per word for my services, and the reason I can get away with it is this: When clients call with a project or article that is a ridiculous amount of work in a ridiculously short frame and they ask me if I can do it, I tell them the only thing they want hear: "Sure. No problem." Clients pay me for my writing skills, but they pay me a lot because I give them the security that the work is going to get done, period. If you can project that sort of confidence in your work—in the quality and in the timeliness—to your clients, it goes a long way to keeping you in work.
2. Nothing lasts forever.
In my time I've had a number of sweet writing gigs: reviewing movies and CDs and video games, writing humor columns and so on. They all come and they all go, and it very often has little to do with me personally—there's a decision in the upper ranks to cut content, or change the job description, or move the publication in another direction or whatever (of course, sometimes it is about me. But never mind that now). These can happen to you, too—and sometimes, God forbid, you just get tired of doing one particular thing. Whatever the reason, budget change into your writing life. If you ever land that sweet, sweet writing gig, the one that has you thinking this is too good to last—you're probably right. Hope it does last. Prepare for it not to.
3. Writers spend too much time obsessing about the people who don't respect them.
Yes, yes, yes. Everyone wants to screw the writer (except for the hot, beautiful people we want to screw, who won't give us the time of day)—no one respects us, no one pays us what we're worth, no one values our contribution, blah blah blah blah blah. Perhaps it's because writers are intelligent introspective folk, or maybe it's because they have no spines, but whatever the reason, writers spend far more time complaining about how they're getting screwed than they spend getting themselves out of the position of being screwed. Now, as a writer, I've been screwed from time to time. But to my credit, I typically only get screwed once.
I don't spend too much time railing about the injustices carried out upon writers en masse by the uncaring world. It's not that I'm insensitive to the plight of my fellow writers—really, I hope you all show up that lousy world one day—but more to the point that my experience has been that there are people who value good work from good writers, and I endeavor to work for them. As a writer and a worker, when I find myself in a position where I feel I'm getting screwed, I tend to vote with my feet. The reason I do this goes back to point #1 up there: I'm reasonably confident I can find work. You should be, too (the secret is to find work before you leave).
4. You're not a real writer until you write a book.
By which I mean, non-writers are fairly unimpressed with you unless you have a book (or a screenplay made into a widely-released movie, and no, straight-to-video doesn't count). I mention to people that I'm a writer, and they ask what I've written. And I go down the list, and they start nodding off until I say, "and I have a book in the stores." At which point you can see the following thought behind their eyes: So! He's not actually a bum after all! Real, honest-to-goodness writers who toil year after year in the dusty fields of journalism or public relations or whatever might find this annoying and irritating, but, hey, I'm not saying this is fair. I'm just saying it happens. People understand "book = writer."
"Book," by the way, meaning printed book—no offense to e-book writers (I happen to be one myself), but if it's not on paper, no one but you counts it as a real book. Oh, and related to this:
5. You really do need an agent.
You're more likely to be eaten by a bull shark off the Florida Panhandle than to sell a book these days without one of these guys. So get one. Get a good one. Trust me.
6. The secret to making money: give in to the Man.
Don't be proud, buster. If your aim in writing is to actually make money from time to time, particularly as a freelance writer, suck it up and write some ad copy. Or a financial brochure. Or a technical document. Or whatever. No, it's not the Great American Novel, but you know what, there can be only one Great American Novel, and the chances of you writing it are pretty damn slim. No offense (I'm not likely to write it either). So you might as well slip in a corporate Web site revise or two. Having said that:
7. You damn well better make time for your "real" writing.
Making money hand over fist is all very nice, but, yes, it's true: You do need to budget time to write the sort of stuff that's important to you, or you will regret it—and then you'll probably make everyone you know regret it, too. And if there's one thing the world doesn't need, it's another depressed 55-year-old writer suddenly realizing that all he or she has to show for three decades of writing work is a stack of faxable press releases or archived city council articles. Yes, it's very sad you blew your wad on that alone. So if only as a preventative measure, to save those who love you from wanting to strangle your sorry ass, pencil in some time on the weekend for your novel.
8. Writing is romantic, but don't be romantic about writing.
Being able to say you're a writer is pretty cool, and gives you singles bar credibility that few other professions that hang out in singles bars can match. But aside from that perk, if you write for a living, and you're not thinking about writing as a business, you're pretty stupid. The three rules of writing:
It's Work.
It's Work.
Surprise! It's Work.
The hot young thangs you meet in a bar will think it's cool you're a writer, but they'll think it's even more cool if you can afford to take them on a date to a place where the food can't be "Super Sized."
9. Be fearless.
My writing career is based on a series of incidents where people have asked me if I could write on a particular subject, and I said, "Oh absolutely," and then I went off and learned about whatever the hell it was I was supposed to be writing on. This is not an exaggeration, by the way—my job at the Fresno Bee was as a movie critic, for which I had absolutely no experience and nothing to recommend me for the position except that I was good with them there words, and I was cheap (oh so very cheap. I was 22. What do you want).
I'm not dumb about this—I'm not going to be writing for a quantum physics journal, for example, since my math skills gave out some time around the quadratic equation—but at the same time, as a writer, I generally have no fear of things I don't know. I'm confident in my ability to learn (Thank you Webb and the University of Chicago), and I'm confident in my ability to communicate. Being fearless when it comes to writing has not just helped my career—fundamentally, it has been my career. Don't be afraid to jump into the deep end of the pool. Trust your writing chops, and trust yourself, and you'll be fine.
10. If you can live with your choices, you're a good writer.
From time to time I wonder if I've done the right thing with my writing career, which has been and continues to be a rather pixilated affair. But ultimately I'm pretty happy with where I am. I earn good money for my family. I write stuff that I enjoy, and I enjoy working with the people for whom I write. I have a good life that I live, for the most part, on my own terms. And while there's more that I want to do with my writing career, I can honestly say that I don't regret any of the choices I've made so far. As a writer, and as a working human being, that's what you hope for. If you can look at your own writing life and feel the same way, then whatever your choices so far, and whatever you want for yourself in the future, you're doing just fine in the here and now.
So there you have it, ten years of writing experience. Let's see what the next ten years has in store.
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In early 2005 I was asked to guest-edit an issue of Subterranean Magazine, a science fiction/fantasy magazine. After announcing my editorship, I posted this piece to let people know how I was planning to handle the inevitable spate of rejections that would ensue. It seems to have worked—after the rejections were mailed out I got e-mails thanking me for being so nice about it all. I try. In any event, the piece described my own rejection policy, but I think you'll find the advice about following directions and how to deal with rejection applicable across a wide range of submission events. I find it useful, in any event, when I submit things.—JS