I’ve been blogging about an issue that plagues most writers: How to earn a living and still write. Yesterday, I started a list of options available to writers who face this challenge (which is to say, virtually all writers), and I promised to continue it today.
Yesterday’s list included writing for corporations, teaching college, and finding non-writing employment you enjoy that allows you enough time and flexibility to write on the side.
Here are three more options for people who want to write, but also enjoy having a roof over their heads.
Free lance editing and/or coaching.I have no actual statistics on how writers support themselves, but I’m going to guess that, next to teaching, editing is their most common form of employment.
Editing and coaching offer writers a wealth of benefits. The best thing about them is that you’re using your skills, you’re working with writers, and you’re getting to see works of art take shape before your very eyes. Free-lance work also offers a level of freedom you seldom get as an employee. You can set your own schedule, with time for your own writing. You can choose which clients to work with and which not.
In this day and age, you can live in New Mexico and have clients in Toronto or Sydney or Hong Kong.
But the free-lance life does bring with it a number of challenges. Not the least of those is the fact that, unless you build up a hell of a reputation, you spend a lot of your time hustling for work, which can cost money, cut severely into your time, and interfere with that freedom I was just touting in the previous paragraph. The other downside: you’re at the mercy of the market, which can give you stretches of time with little pay, so if you don’t have a safety net—especially when you’re just getting started—this can be a precarious choice.
Still, many writers have found free-lance editing and coaching an excellent way to support their work and put food on the table.
Get a writing-related job at a publishing house or for a magazine. There are a zillion different types of publishing jobs, requiring different levels of skill and offering different levels of pay. Editing, sales, publicity, rights management, distribution, design, and more. Most writers go into editorial positions—starting as copy editors or editorial assistants and working their way up—but I’ve known a couple who were in other areas, perfectly happy to be engaged in publishing on any level.
I’ll be brief about these jobs. The upside: you’re working in publishing. You have the opportunity to learn about the industry, you’re working with writers (at least in some positions), and you’re meeting people who have the power to help your writing career.
Not a few well-known writers started out as editors for publishing houses, and they always seem to benefit from their unique knowledge of the mysteries of publication.
The downside: the people I’ve known who worked in these jobs were either stress-junkies who actually enjoyed crazy rat-race lifestyles, or they were utterly miserable. I’m not saying these are bad jobs: I’m saying they take a certain type of stress-loving personality. If you have it, this might be the perfect option for you.
Learn to live on next to nothing. I’m being serious here. It’s been done. It’s being done even now. People live in tiny houses, in small apartments, without cars, on simple-but-healthy food. They reduce their consumption, walk to the store, and entertain themselves by reading rather than going to concerts. They eat in, rather than out, and they shop at thrift stores.
Can you do it? More to the point, can you be happy doing it? That is really the question here. Don’t pretend it wouldn’t be a sacrifice to choose this option. But also don’t forget that the pay-off can be enormous. It’s all about exchanging things for time
—in this case, writing time.
So there they are: six ways to earn your keep while living as a writer. I’m not going to pretend anyone out there couldn’t have come up with this list on their own. Most of these options are pretty obvious. But I’ve listed them here for a reason: because writers get very, very hung up on the issue of making a living. We all get so balled up in the desire to make money off our writing that we end up thinking we have no good options. I hear it all the time in my coaching practice and from my friends—and I’ve complained about it myself.
But when you actually sit down and look at the possibilities—here they are, six of them—they aren’t bad at all. The six options I’ve listed here cover the gamut, from high-paying to low, writing-related to not, traditional to non. They fit a wide variety of needs, skills, and personalities. And they’re all reasonably do-able.
So, when that frustration over making a living creeps over you—and it will, my friend, it will—just go back to this list, and realize you have choices.