"You'll Never Make Any Money Writing"

Before I claim to be something I'm not, I'll let you know a little bit about my life as a writer: I began, like so many of you might have, with the words "you're good at writing" from teachers as I was going through my elementary and high school years. Garnering even a few awards for essays I wrote, I thought it wasn't such a bad thing to be praised and lauded just for putting words to paper in a meaningful way. It was, dare I say it, pretty easy back then. I can't say I even ever really outlined unless an outline was required for an assignment.

I graduated high school over ten years ago with the starry-eyed ambition to finish and sell a novel by age twenty-five, and I am way past that idealistic deadline. I had my renaissance with writing during the great Young Adult boom that resulted in successes such as Stephenie Meyer's Twilight saga and Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games trilogy. Clued in by those two phenomenons running back-to-back, I dabbled in supernatural romance and dystopian fiction—not because I loved those things but because I had seen the way those things sold in the publishing market. For instance, The Hunger Games helped pave the way for things like Divergent and The Maze Runner. If those books were published today, they likely would not have even been green-lit for their film adaptations. The market is ever-changing in that regard.

That was definitely my first mistake: almost as soon as I started writing my first novel draft at age nineteen, I was doing the homework for what was required to be published. Even before I had a first full draft done, I knew about things like agent querying, market trends, high-concept ideas, the nature of advances and royalties, etc. I jumped the gun in a bad way, and it affected my trajectory with my first novel and those projects that followed. Between the years 2009 to 2012, I probably trunked at least a handful of novel drafts. And in that time I tried to nurse my inner perfectionist by focusing on critiquing other novels through book reviews.

Flash forward a few years. I attended college in my mid-twenties and found myself in a creative writing class. During workshop days, my professor gushed about the pieces I shared with the class. (My classmates probably hated me.) Another professor I admired even told me that she wouldn't be surprised if I had my publishing debut within ten years. My work was included in my college's literary journal, I received a yearly creative writing award for my portfolio from the class I had attended, and I had short non-fiction place in a creative writing competition among colleges statewide.

You would think all these things would have fed my ego and helped me gain the confidence to go back to my novel-writing attempts. But, no, "imposter syndrome" had dug its claws into me so deep that I was sure it was just pure luck that my writing fared well. It was a small pool of writers, my peers were just starting out with their writing, it wasn't even what I enjoyed writing, etc.

What does my "writing life" look like now? I haven't tried to write a novel in years. There have been false starts and festering hopes, but honestly? Nothing has passed the 10K mark in a long, long time. The likelihood that I'll be a novelist is probably less than my chance at winning a lottery jackpot or even getting struck by lightning. I've watched a decade's worth of writers pull past that finish line that I can't even see from where I stand now. I've seen trends come and go. I've just stood still on the shoreline as other writers have dared the waters and succeeded in swimming to the other shore. I have had to turn away and realize that my writing is probably not meant for the world of novels.

I also don't tell anyone I write in my spare time. My family members know, but new people? I don't dare bring up writing because there will follow the expectation and the dreaded question: "Do you make any money from it?" Like most writers probably would, I cringe away from those words. They are anathema to the very beating heart of an artist. Do you want your creativity to shrivel up like a grape turning into a raisin? Then find someone who will compare your writing output to the amount of money you have to show from it. (Oh, hi, Vocal Stats page.) That's the perfect way to become discouraged with any writing you do. And that's how you, like me, will go for years without tackling your craft and taking it seriously.

Enter 2021. Like many Vocal members, I discovered the site through social media ads about the Little Black Book Challenge. I won't lie and say the idea of $20,000 wasn't an incentive (it was), but I also found myself intrigued by the idea that Vocal would pay me for content I created for reads on their site. I was just so accustomed to sites where you could post writing and gain a following but not be paid for any of it (like Wattpad). As far as I had known, I—as a writer who dabbled in short fiction mostly—could only hope to make money through literary journal writing contests (with their $15-$20 entry fees). While Vocal is primarily geared towards blog-like content, I do still make a few cents here and there for the fiction and poetry pieces I submit. But I'm not here to try and make a living through my works. If anything, I look at Vocal as a safe space where I can push my writing out into the world and people can choose to read or not.

Recently, people I know have been frank with me: "You're thirty years old. You have to face the facts that you'll never make money from your writing." What doesn't seem to translate as well is my increasing ennui with the idea of "hitting it big" with my writing. Sure, it would be cool to write a vivid novel and see it eventually adapted into another medium, like a movie or TV series, but really? I know that traditional publishing would never bank on my kind of writing. My writing is quiet, low-key, understated—not markers of things that will become lucrative and profitable. I have had to make my peace with the fact that I'm not going to be what everyday people will call a "success" as a writer.

All that to say? As trite as it sounds, as a writer you need to be present not for the hope of material or monetary rewards but for the joy of the work. While writing can sometimes be like pulling teeth on the bad days, there has to be a way you can draw back on how you feel rather than be focused on what you'll gain from the exertion. Writing isn't easy, but there is satisfaction in it once you sit back and face what you've created.

If you can't be honest with yourself about exactly why you're writing, then you'll face more pain and disappointment than if you take the time to evaluate what kind of writer you are, what kind of writer you want to be, and what the compromise would be between those two ends of the spectrum. Don't be like me, getting so caught up in the chase that you waste your precious writing life. If you can make money with your writing, great, but if you can't? At least find happiness in the act of creating itself.