Making The Words Pay
New York is reputed to be the publishing and literary capital of the world; a place where media giants, the best talent, and industry leadership all swarm like the ants covering that piece of candy you dropped off the front porch and forgot to pick up. After all, as Frank Sinatra promised us over and over, “If I can make it there I’ll make it anywhere…”. But even with the supposed edge for opportunity that New York writers have over the rest of us, wordsmiths in the Big Apple sometimes have a tough time making ends meet and have to be creative about the financial strategies they use to keep their careers rolling forward.
In an article published last year in New York magazine, six writers share how they managed to stay afloat even when writing wouldn’t pay the bills.
https://www.thecut.com/article/how-writers-make-money.html
For R. O. Kwon (Debut novel: Incendiaries, Riverhead Books, 2018) trying to manage a full-time job unrelated to writing after she graduated was just a soulless dead-end. For her, what economic security there was in that could not compensate for the sense that she wasn’t fully using her writing talent: “ But then I was so miserable not being a writer after college that it seemed to me that no matter what, I had to go into writing, and not doing so would be its own kind of death.” One of her strategies was freelancing from home. This worked, it suited her introverted nature, and also left her with energy at the end of the workday to write. Her advice is to find side work that will support, not hamper, your main focus – writing. She also applied for a lot of support resources tailored to helping writers financially. And she found pointers to many of those opportunities by studying the acknowledgement sections of other authors’ books. Brilliant idea!
Did Kwon’s determination to prioritize her commitment to writing guarantee her success? That’s impossible to quantify. Maybe the real question should be: could she have gotten the same results if she hadn’t? Hugging our dreams tightly and leaping into the uncertain universe takes courage. But sometimes, the universe hugs us back.