Of course! It’s true. There are many different types of writers…
There are the poets, the artists who can paint words across your eyes that seep into your brain. And pow! You just fell in love.
There are the those who pummel prose until it vibrates and convulses across the page like a creature frenetic at first and then purposeful and calm, like a sage sitting atop a granite peak whispering words so true that your heart breaks and your eyes are fixed firm onto your great and giant purpose.
There are those who can write the thriller, the fantasy, the Harlequin romance, the screenplay about Captain American and the Mad Hatter on a raisin tasting tour and sell it to Disney for a cool five million. These are the studio guys who have mastered the art of story telling so that even your sandwich bag finds herself on a complex hero’s journey. Woah! Did you see that plot twist coming? Those crazy raisins! Those studio types are geniuses. Ha! Ha!
There are the business writers who can “write great copy.” They can write a Hallmark card one minute and turn around with a proposal the next. Give them your resume that’s barely hanging on by the hinges and in two hours you’ll be sitting behind a mahogany desk sipping on 401Ks with stock options. I’m convinced these are just lazy engineers anyway (they learned how to write by reading Star Trek Next Gen books).
Then there is you. Where do you fit in? I might have described you. I might have left you out. Or maybe you are a hybrid like most of us. And maybe you want to earn a paycheck as a writer. You still have that delusion that people will hire you for your talent. You probably just got done applying for 10 writing jobs for the 5th time this year on Indeed. Or maybe that was just my three comrades: me, myself, and I.
The undeniable truth is that making a living through your writing is extremely difficult, if not impossible. This is an understatement. There is an endless supply of educated folks who can write serviceable enough that they don’t need you to write short copy. But they keep posting jobs just to torture us with the promise of low wages and non-stop team engagement.
But let me save you some time. Writing wants you to quit. It wants you to give up so your project can go to someone with a higher WPM rate. It wants you to quit so you forever remain out of print but buy into the fantasy that someday you will make it. Yeah, you write? Good luck getting paid for it! And don’t look to Stephanie Meyer as an example. She sold her soul to the devil with the caveat that she give the vampires sparkling skin. And stop looking at JK Rowling. She was Mother Theresa in her previous life. Of course you’d bring up Dan Brown. You silly child. The New York Times Best Seller list is rigged and he’s still funneling money to the Mafia for that press coverage.
Seriously, who is going to hire you for your prose? You are talented, you say! You are original, you say! You are tenacious, you say! You have something to say, you say!
Fine, don’t listen to me. And don’t follow my path. I’ve always considered myself an artist. I write books in my spare time. These are important, and uncomfortable books for people who like big ideas and dangerous emotions. So why wouldn’t you follow my path?Well you guessed it, no one reads what I’m writing.
Listen, do yourself a favor, don’t be like me. Stop writing. Get a sensible career in business, retail, or engineering. No one will hire you because you can write. They will hire you because they know your brother-in-law who works in Real Estate. Don’t be like me. Give up on your dreams. Life is much easier to cope with when you can afford the rent.