Good for you! Write! Write to your heart’s contents. Write about anything and every-thing. Let you friends and your relatives read and enjoy your work. Remember, you don’t have to be published to be a writer. There are thousands of great writers who not only were never published, but never even sought to be published.
So you want to make a living as a writer.
The goal of being a writer was a good thing. A fun thing. It could bring you a lot of joy and fulfillment. Why do you have to spoil it by trying to make money at it? Once you make money from something it becomes a product. And products are evaluated by how much they sell. The people who buy products have a right to have an opinion of them and express that opinion anyway they want.
All that would be okay, but there are other people who are in between the writer and the people who might want to read what is written. They are the gatekeepers -the people who decide who gets to read what you’ve written. They only come into play when money is involved. You can write blogs, posts, articles for small publications and never really have to deal with these people because there’s no money involved so they have no say and no power over your work.
But once real money enters the picture, these people are there. Many of them are agents or publishers, but they can be book, magazine or newspaper editors, movie or television producers or directors, studio or network executives, managers, advisors and investors. It’s their money or someone else’s money that they control so they have a say.
It’s not just them, however. It’s their assistants, secretaries, spouses and interns. They also have a say and often they are the real gatekeepers in today’s world where the supply (people who want to write for money) really outweighs the demand (people who will supply that money). So, you sometimes have a seventeen-year-old working for free at a major company who decides if his boss will get a chance to read your work. It’s not the intern’s fault and it’s not the fault of the boss. I’d like to say it’s the fault of the agents because writers like to blame agents for everything, but it’s not really their fault either. It’s the fault of the system, but that’s really about supply and demand again.
If an individual can make millions of dollars from writing something naturally a lot of people will want to do it. As co-creator of the show, Taylor Sheridan makes 1.3 million dollars for every episode of Yellowstone and that’s just one of his projects. He also created the spin off series 1883 and Mayor of Kingstown and wrote the films Hell or High Water and Sicario. He’s worth over $70 million but it took him quite a while to get there.
You have to wonder how many times did he send in an idea that no one even read or got pitched into the trash by an agent who had a bad day. Lots of times.
And everything changes once you do start making money as a writer. From that moment on, every time you look at a blank page the question arises, Will This Make Money? What ends up happening is you have to sort of sneak up on a project. You have to force yourself to not get anxious or box yourself in. You’ve heard of writer’s block? Writer’s Block comes when you’ve boxed yourself in too tight with expectations. That why so many writers drink heavily or use drugs. What kind of mind screw-ups do you think Earnest Hemmingway or Philip K. Dick went through?
Also, writing pretty much makes you unfit for any other kind of work. Once you let the tiger out, it’s hard to get him back in the cage.
So, my advice for those who want to make a career out of writing is don’t. But I also know that if you really have the gift, nothing I say is going to stop you. And that’s okay because that’s what it takes. Good luck.