This is Part 16 of a multiple-part live-blog of Jane Friedman’s The Business of Being a Writer. Parts 1-15 can be found here.
Writer and editor Jane Friedman believes writing can be a career, and her latest book, The Business of Being a Writer, lays out just what components go into writing as a business. It should resonate with everyone out there who writes or would like to write for a living. It’s my hope that teachers of writing, especially at the MFA level, will also take up this refrain.
I’m working through Friedman’s book right now, and I am finding places where my own experience either bolsters or informs Friedman’s neat summation and gentle advice. For the duration of my time through this first read of The Business of Being a Writer, I will be posting these experiences for you. I invite you to share widely, and add your own experiences to the comments. Each post will begin with a quote from Friedman’s book, and end with some actionable tips that you can put to work in your own writing career.
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“Freelancers have to decide if they’re willing to accept PR or publicity-related writing opportunities alongside traditional gigs. Many writers do both but rarely talk about the corporate-sponsored writing they do (which usually doesn’t include their byline).”
The Business of Being a Writer, pg. 230
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Wooooeeee. It has been a long, long time. I am sorry, because I have really, really missed writing these, AND we are coming to the end. (My high school track coach used to always yell at us if we didn’t sprint through the end of the race. This feels a little bit like that.)
I was away for a little bit, and then we acquired New Puppy, whose name is huckleberry, small aitch.
Tell you what, people. New puppies are demanding. Mine is great in his crate, unless you’re not within eyesight, and then, according to Mr. Gooddirt, it’s howl city. As far as I know, this does not happen when we leave the house. We’re just in the full swing of house training now in his total of 16 days with us, huckleberry has gone a total of five days without peeing in the house. I count it a win, although those days were not consecutive.
And he has largely stopped eating rocks, bits of patio cement, and flower petals, but his new favorite thing seems to be lizard poops. Sigh. Yes, yes, to eat.
In any case, he’s a confident, curious creature, and the differences between he and Sprocket are stacking up. (My vet says I have Second Dog Syndrome. Apparently it’s a Thing among people who had great first dogs.) But that’s another post.
Anyway! Moving on. Oh, sorry. Here’s a photo.
(For the record, huckleberry is not at all forlorn about being under the couch. That is where he wants to be.)
Okay. Sorry for that minor diversion. Now, onto this post, which strikes at a subject that is near and dear to my heart. This is a little jumbly right now, because, although I’ve been living with this train of thought for a long time, it is a long, long train, with lots and lots of interesting little cars that don’t always want to stay on the track. But I am going to give it a shot.
When I was in my first editorial assistant job, I was already working for the J. Peterman catalog as a copywriter. So “corporate copy” wasn’t something I shied from, although I’d be lying if I didn’t say I told myself that the fictional nature of that copy and the imagining it allowed me to do was fueling my future career as a novelist. I’d also already done a stint in advertising, and spent a good amount of time picking apart commercials and advertisements, wondering how they worked and made me Want Things. (For more on my beginnings in marketing and corporate copy, listen to this episode of Writers’ Rough Drafts.)
But this is not the post on why we should look at corporate copy/advertorials/whatever with as much gravitas as we look at “real writing.” (That post is here.) This is a post on the harm we do to the industry of writers in general, and to the generations of writers who come after us, if we don’t acknowledge all the work we do.
Am I being dramatic? Not in the least.
Listen. We’ve all heard writers kvetch and moan about how annoying it is when someone says, “Oh, you’re a writer? Cool. Write anything I’d have read?” It seems to be a sly way of asking writers if they’re famous enough. Lately, I’ve taken to answering this way:
“It depends on what you like to read.”
I like this answer for a lot of reasons. It puts the onus on the asker of the question to tell me what they like, and it opens up conversation. But we all know that’s not the intent of the question, and that intent is why I think it’s important for all of us to disclose how writers actually make their money:
Many people believe that, if you get paid for putting words down on paper, you are not a real writer.
I know. It sounds crazy. But I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that writing corporate copy or social-media posts “isn’t really writing.” I once heard this from a jackweed customs officer, believe it or not.
Come on, people. Writers who write corporate copy or social media copy are quite likely making more bank than any of us ever will penning short stories or poems. I made $5 a word easy when I was writing for Peterman, and that was in the late ’90s. Tell me I’m not a writer, for writing pithy, imaginative copy that makes people want to up and buy a tiny faux-croc-skin change purse for $75. I dare you.
And here comes the second reason for being loud and proud of where you make your money: I can’t think of another profession that is as head-in-the-clouds when it comes to how we make our money as writing for a living is. You’re not doing the profession any good by not placing a dollar value on what you write, and accounting for it over the entire arc of your career. This attitude is destructive. College students and their parents regularly ask me if it’s still possible to make a living as a novelist. The answer is that it never was possible to make a living JUST as a novelist. Writers always have some other thing going on, whether it was writing corporate stuff, or speaking gigs, or editing, or writing articles about the craft of writing. Sure, it’s all related, but it’s not all strictly writing novels.
We are not one-trick ponies. We are hacks, sometimes. And we should be damn proud of it, because it puts food on the table and keeps us writing and awake and doing things we also like to do, like having lunch with writer friends. And signing up for races that cost a pretty penny. And going to writer’s retreat. And running literary magazines.
So: Got a day job? Say it loud and proud, right alongside of your “Yes, I’m a writer.” Write copy for a living while you’re penning your magnum opus? Say that, too. Giving guided tours of New York while you’re screenwriting? Yeah, that too. Walking dogs? Man. You’re going to have some awesome stories.
Listen. When we can come to terms with the fact that writing does not pay all the bills, we might actually be able to make people value our work. We might actually then bring it home to people who expect us to do stuff “for free,” because we are ostensibly “living our dreams,” or whatever.
The more we can get used to the fact that writing is a commodity, the more we can expect to get paid for it. Because every time I open up a new word document, or a new notebook, I am putting a little piece of my memory, my education, my heart down on that piece of paper, and dammit, I expect to get paid well for it.
