cloudtaxidermy asked:
Hello, as many writers are, when you were young did people tell you not to quit your day job? Or discourage you in similar ways?
Writing was my job. My dad wanted me to get a real job, and talked me into agreeing to go to a job interview as someone who showed prospective customers show houses. (”You’ll have plenty of time to write between people,” he said cheerfully.)
I took a very long bus trip across North London, and sat in an outer office for a few hours, and then, about 6:15 pm, the secretary apologised to me as they hadn’t yet managed to see me. I took a very long bus journey home, and that was the end of my Day Job.
Oh to be rich, male, and/or white enough to actually have this be an option…
I’m sure people would have told me not to quit my day job if I’d had a day job.
My day job, night job, and only job, was writing in 1984. It was how I made my living, put a roof over my head, and fed myself. I wrote and sold articles as a freelance journalist, to anyone who would buy them. My rent back then was 25 pounds a week – a tiny bedroom in a distant relative’s tiny flat in North London. I had no financial resources, no academic qualifications, and no contacts. I didn’t even go on the dole, as I was scared they’d try and make me take an actual job that wasn’t writing, if I did. There was nothing else I wanted to do. I figured the only way I’d get to be a good enough writer to sell novels was if I wrote, a lot… and I had no other skills. So I would come up with ideas for articles and get on the phone, and talk to editors, persuade them to commission something, and if someone bought an interview for £300 I’d get to eat and pay my rent and pay for my bus or tube travel that month. If they bought an interview and an article, then I’d be able to go to the pub without being scared of having to buy a round of drinks.
My dad was worried that I’d starve, and thought that my making a living from writing was not possible, which was why he tried to get me to take an actual job. (See above. The guy never saw me.)
I don’t know if what I did would be possible now – when I started out I crossed my fingers and lied to editors about previous credits to get them to take me seriously, which wouldn’t be possible now (they could Google, or ask me to send PDFs, or just ask for links to what I’d done). But it was possible then. (I was ashamed enough of this that I then made sure that, over the next five years, I had written for every magazine I said I had written for, so that I was not lying, only temporally challenged.)
Year one as a writer I made about £3,000, and that was what I lived on. By the end of year two I had made about £6,000 writing, as I’d sold two non-fiction books – but had a wife and a baby and we needed somewhere to live. I was writing and reviewing, too. I’d sell the review copies of books after I read them, sell the publicity stills for movies I reviewed to a store that took them, review for anyone, write for anyone, anything to keep us fed.
The next year I was offered a job by one of the magazines I’d written for, to be their features editor. A real job, that paid like a real job, and there was another baby on the way. But I also knew that if I took that job, I’d be on a different path to the one I was on, and wouldn’t be a writer any more. And I wouldn’t be this writer, any more. So I bit my lip, said no, and kept writing.
And it worked out. And now, almost forty years later, I’ve written more books than I can count offhand, and, more importantly, I’ve made books and comics and drama that made people happy. And I’ve been lucky. I’ve seen lots of people with the same talent I had, or the same amount of determination not make it, so I would never make the mistake of telling people that if they are determined and keep going and do the work they will be fine. On the other hand I’ve seen people who could have made it go off and do other things, which kind of guaranteed that they wouldn’t make it. I’m glad, and relieved, it worked out for me.