Fiction Authors are Crazy

It always seems to set readers back on their heels when they find out I have a day job.  I can almost hear their thoughts:  “Well, she can’t be a real writer, if she has a day job.”

Yet the sad fact is that the majority of authors have day jobs.  The percentage of authors otherwise-employed rises sharply when you consider only fiction authors.

Us authors understand why this sad fact exists.  It’s because of the steep pit we all live in.  As soon as you try to climb up the sides towards quit-the-day-job freedom at the top, the sides abruptly grow vertical and slippery.  Yet all of us at the bottom of the pit dream and frantically scrabble to find the secret to quitting the day job.  It’s an almost universal obsession amongst authors with a day job.

It’s not like we’re not trying.

All of us have to sleep.  Between working, commuting and sleeping, that’s 16+ hours of our 24 hour allotment already gone.  Then there’s eating, taking care of our homes, working out, showering, dressing, shopping, meal preparation, and a long list of other activities that have to take place in order for our lives to stay on the rails and keep rolling.  Right now, for instance, there’s tax return preparation, and for the day-job-anchored author, that’s a unique nightmare.

Those who aspire to be published are probably rolling their eyes, thinking “No problems, I can handle that.”  But it gets worse.  Most published authors with a day job aren’t earning enough for their publisher to sink money into promoting their books.  I know that seems counter-intuitive, but the publishing industry is a business like any other.  Publishers won’t spend money promoting a title they aren’t sure won’t return their investment.  So only the better selling authors get promotion dollars spent on them.  The day-job author must spend his own time and money promoting his books.  Take that time out of your spare eight hours, and then keep up your writing output, too.

“Stash away some money,” is the oft-quoted advice.  “Build up six months/a year’s worth of expenses, then quit.”

Ah, but while you’re building that stash, you must use a big chunk of it to promote your novel to make enough sales to make enough money to build up your stash.  It’s a nasty little circle and it’s evolving into a tighter circle, because many editors state they like to see an author spending money promoting themselves and their novels.  It tells the editor that the author is a true professional and serious about their career.  One has to assume that the lack of promotion can kill a sale.   So…promote, or perish.

“Build up your back list, and that will build up your royalties, so you’re earning enough to quit.”  Okay….  In order to build up a backlist, an author needs to keep pumping out the books (oh, and selling them!)  That means stop spending time promoting your books in order to write more.  And also ignore your family, don’t work out, and let someone else take care of the taxes.  Sleeping becomes somewhat optional.  You have to get six hours minimum, because anything much shorter than that and your brain turns to mush and your fiction output to dreck.

If you’re studying to be a doctor, you can be reasonably sure that if you work diligently, then in about eight years time, you’ll get to wear a white coat, and rewards and respect will be yours.  You don’t mind putting up with seven or so years of back-breaking hard work and no sleep, because there will be an end to it.  The path to earning your MD is wide and well trodden.  No pit.  No impossible-to-scale walls.  There’s milestones along the way to assure you that you’re making progress.  And even for the most mediocre doctor in the world, the money is pretty damned good.

For a fiction writer, though, there’s no guarantees – none – that we’re ever going to actually get out of the pit.  There is no easy, well marked way out.  The way that works for one writer doesn’t do a thing for the next.  The US Department of Labor reported in 2004 that “Median annual earnings for salaried writers and authors were $44,350.”  That’s the average.  And that’s for salaried writers, and again, that’s only a small percentage of all the writers out there – the ones for whom writing is their day job.  There are no fiction writers who write their novels for a salary.

Despite the lack of guarantees, while we’re in the pit most writers dream of writing the breakout novel that gets them editorial attention and one of those advances that are reported in newspapers – an advance that will give them living expenses for six months or a year….  Interestingly, we don’t dream of making millions.  Just enough to let us quit the day job, and stay quit.

Then there’s the fairytale ending to JK Rowling’s seven years plus of penal-like servitude while she worked at getting the first Harry Potter book written and then sold.  We all dream about that happening to us.  We all are living in our own personal versions of stress hell while we look for the magic button that will get us out of the pit.

Isn’t it any wonder that most people think fiction writers are stark raving bonkers?  We have good reason to be.

There’s two things that save us from genuine insanity.  One is the writing itself.  We keep returning to the desk and getting the story written because, goddamit, we can’t stop.  Finishing a story is a high unlike any other in the world – especially if we’ve been true to our muse and written as well as we can.  Slap-dashing a story off to meet a demand or a deadline spoils it a little, but not enough to stop us from coming back to the desk.  Creating stories is addictive, endlessly fascinating, soul restoring and some of the best fun you can have with your clothes on.

The second thing that saves us is whatever our version of family may be.  A devoted mother, long-sighted father, brothers, sisters or cousins, even children, who rally around and celebrate every little victory the writer experiences.  For many of us, it’s our spouse who picks us when the rejections hit fast and thick, blow our noses and push us back towards the desk.  It’s our spouses who put up with being ignored for most of the time, and taking the lion’s share of household responsibilities.  After a few years of experience, these angels turn into our personal PR assistants, secretaries, de facto concept editors, reviewers, line editors, communications experts, travel companions and more.  They learn the basics of psychological counseling and put our souls back together again when we go through yet another cyclical chest beating session of “I’m never going to be able to quit my job!  It’s just not fair!!!!”

When I mentioned that I was looking for a topic for this week’s blog, my spouse jokingly suggested I write about how wonderful he is.  I laughed a little.  Then I thought about just how amazing he really is.  He lives down here at the bottom of the pit with me, holds my hand, and makes it anything but lonely, and sometimes – when I relax enough to let it happen – he makes it a warm, sunny place where I’m happy to linger.

Just for a while.