I went to a poetry reading tonight and asked a dumb question to an awarding winning author about how one can make a living as a poet.
His answer: "Forget it. You can't."
He didn't exactly say it, but I got the impression that even he has trouble making any money with his books of poetry, even though he had a huge crowd of folks at the reading waiting on his every word.
As I walked home, rather embarrassed by my question and hoping not to be noticed by others in the audience, I couldn't help but think that writers...most of us...are really having a hard time these days.
Let's forget poetry for a moment. Most of us put that at the bottom when we think of types of writing that brings home the bacon, (although poetry often comes across as something the rich love to appreciate. I guess they just don't buy the stuff!)
But more importantly, let's look at the other kinds of writing, journalistic and creative writing, freelancing, sportswriting. The list goes on to include opinion, essays, memoirs, and blogging. Your chance of making a living by any of these alone are about the same as being swept away by a tornado.
Gone are the days in which I was planning to support myself into retirement by a fun and exciting career as a reporter at the Philadelphia Enquirer. Don't ask me why I chose that paper. It just seemed like a good paper to work for.
I met my husband to be at The University of Iowa's School of Journalism. He was to be a professional sports writer. I evolved into deciding to major in the magazine sequence. I liked the fact that one could write in more depth for magazines. Also I thought that I would get to travel more as a magazine writer to exciting parts of the world.
Never happened. My husband did become a sports writer, but never moved beyond a mid-sized paper in a town most people have never heard of. I discovered that his employer didn't like to hire a spouse of an employee, so I settled for a copywriter for the advertising department of the local TV station. Gone was the objective reporting of the journalist. Hello to telling lies about used cars and promoting the next Town Crier.
Let's now move ahead some 35 years. Still no Philadelphia Enquirer. No magazine writing, other than a few freelanced articles over the years. I started this blog about two years ago just to give that little writing bug in me a chance to buzz around. My most remembered writing by the public seems to be simply my letters to the editor that I regularly sent to the local paper where my husband worked, often criticizing its extremely conservative views and exposing the polluters in our company town who were putting our children's health in danger.
Today my husband is still grinding out the sports stories, now for a website and as a freelance writer for various give away papers. He has even authored a book which he never saw any profit from a few thousand sales.
I have moved over to working for nonprofits, where I can do some writing, but that's grantwriting, media releases for upcoming events, sponsorship letters and public relations oriented materials.
What I'm trying to get across is the idea that it is darn hard to make a living by being a writer. Whatsmore, it is not a good idea to go to college and major in journalism, especially if you want to make a living in that field.
If you are a good writer, that's great. But be a good writer for another discipline, such as a scientific field or writing research materials on education or law.
Writers in 2009 are a penny a dozen. In these days of blogs, Facebook, Twitter and other forms of internet communication, anyone can be a writer. And forget creativity! Everything is written for Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
I was approved for a paid position with a few online sites, but basically writers were instructed to write in such a manner to be noticed by the search engines, using html language, and essentially killing whatever creativity I had left. For all of that, I would have been lucky to make $15 an article. Compare that with the $250 an article I could make back in the mid-70's.
Life as a writer just isn't what many amateurs would like to think it is. When I asked my question about making money as a poet tonight, I had allowed myself to think perhaps there was a slight chance that a real good poet could support herself with her poetry. Not quite!
I take the following quote from Writer Beware Blogs (accrispin.blogspot.com):
A survey of American authors undertaken in 1979 found that the median annual income for writers was less than $5,000, with only 10% earning more than $45,000 (The Wages of Writing by Paul William Kingston and Jonathan R. Cole, Columbia University Press, 1986). In 1995, things hadn't improved much--the median income for respondents in a survey of freelance writers conducted by the National Writers' Union was $4,000 per year, with only 16% earning more than $30,000 per year. In 2004-2005, the UK-based Authors Licensing & Collecting Society funded a survey of 25,000 British and German writers, which revealed that professional UK authors had a median yearly wage of just over £12,000. The US-based Authors Guild estimates that its average member earns an annual writing income of less than $25,000.
As much as I love the internet and the freedom to write whatever I want when I want it for whomever wants to read it, this new type of communications has also hurt what future there was for the professional journalist.
Hardly any other type of career has seen as many layoffs as have writers for newspapers, magazines and news services in recent years. And no one can see things getting any better any time in the near future. Print media is threatened by citizen media....the internet, where people write their own news by what they see on youtube, Opensalon and Dailykos.com.
So if you are a good writer, that's fine. Just don't plan on making a living at it any time soon.