The struggling writer – living in dire poverty – is not a new image, but neither is it an outdated one. Writing, or producing any art, is a difficult path to take, and even more difficult one to actual earn a living from.

Money something that is so often missed out of writing conversations, or indeed conversations about any type of art. There are of course the cultural norms of talking openly about private wealth, and added to this is the misconception that artists create art for art’s sake and don’t in fact need money for mortgages, rent, food or any other basic necessities.

It’s a subject that has been playing on my mind for a little while, but I haven’t had the energy to articulate my thoughts (thanks first trimester grimness). But it’s not income from writing I want to talk about. It’s about where we start from, the time before we’ve produced something we’re selling on.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen or been a part of a discussion about this. I think there many reasons for this, more than I can think of because it’s a complex topic. But I think it’s high time we openly discuss this, if only to shed a light on the disparity faced by many writers who aspire to earn (at least some of) their living from writing.

And, before I start, I think it’s important to mention that I’m not just talking about traditional publishing. Indie/self-publishing falls victim to this too.

Neither am I slamming anyone from any background. Whatever position we all find ourselves in, every writer is working hard towards their goals, and every writer has different obstacles to those goals. I just think money is a very big obstacle/privilege that is often overlooked.

Time

If you want to earn a living from writing, you need the time to produce the goods.

I am in a privileged position. My job pays enough that I can work four days a week and still live comfortably. My job is also 9-5 and I work from home. This means I not only have a whole weekday to dedicate to writing, I can also write when I might otherwise have been squeezed into an underground carriage for an hour-long commute.

And still, this isn’t a huge amount of time. Even with my one extra day a week, my writing progress isn’t fast. Speed may not be of the essence when you’re writing your first book, especially if you aim to go down the traditional route. But once you’ve signed? You  need to be producing regular works to sell onto publishers (unless you are very very lucky).

And if you decide to go indie? Quick release books are a hugely popular way for indie authors to gain momentum and boost income. But even with a free day a week, I would struggle to create that much quality content, that quickly.

You need time to produce a constant flow of content needed to earn a living from writing. I have listened to so many podcast, read so many articles from or about authors who are making a living through their writing. They talk about their writing routines, from breakfast through the dinner and how they produce a book a year. And of course they do… because in none of these discussion do they mention work. Writing is their work.

However, a single person in the UK needs on average £20,300 a year to live comfortably (that is assuming £400/month for rent – fellow Londoners fall about in laughter with me) so cutting work is certainly not something that many people can consider unless they have a partner who earns enough to keep them both comfortable, or a job that pays enough to go part time.

Many, many people do not have that luxury. Shift work, the expectation to work overtime with no extra pay, minimum wage jobs, unpaid internships, zero hour contracts… I’ve done all of these and let me tell you: it is not conducive to producing high quality writing, if you have the time or energy to produce anything at all.

I personally don’t buy the ‘you can always find time’ excuse. I am a great believer in consistent writing practice, and using my time wisely, but the idea that someone who doesn’t need to work is on an even keel as someone who has to work 9 hours shifts on their feet in customer service is just ignorant. The same goes with ‘everyone has to make sacrifices’. On the face of it: very true. But those sacrifices look very different in reality. These days if I want to save money towards a writing expense, I’ll cut a my Netflix and maybe the odd subscription to a beauty box. When I was working on Sainsbury’s shop floor, if I needed to save money, I’d skip a meal.

I guess the point here that I’m trying to make is that so many writers are immediately disadvantaged because demands to pay for the absolute basics mean that they do not have the time (or even the energy) to produce high quality or quantity art that will put them in front of agents/publishers/readers/influencers.

Learning

A vital part of growing as a writer is learning. There are a multitude of free resources out there – blogs, vlogs, social media accounts and writer’s groups. But there are also a huge range of expert-led courses and webinars that charge for attendance.

Many of the courses I’ve seen often come with the pull of making industry contacts, and accessing experts in certain fields where you can get 1-2-1 support. The prices are eye-watering. From £1,000 to over £5,000 (and let’s not even look at higher education courses).

I have nothing against these courses, or that they charge fees – everyone has to earn a living. But it’s unwise to discount the potential led up attending one (or several) could give a writer – whether that’s contacts, confidence or knowledge.

Many of the courses can be replicated with good amounts of research and on a far smaller budget by buying or borrowing writing craft books. But here I’ll just refer back to the section on Time.

Publishing costs

Self-publishing is really booming, and for good reason.

Traditional publishing can be a slow process, with a certain amount of creative control taken away from the author (not to mention the gatekeeping to get in,
in the first place).

But although self-publishing opens up a whole realm of opportunity, it isn’t open to all. Self-publishing comes at a very real cost. Editing, formatting, design, marketing… all these cost a lot of money. When I was thinking of self-pubbing A Promise of Blood & Stone, I put together some rough budgets. It would cost me at the very minimum £3,000 to publish. With very little hope of getting a return on that investment in the short term. To put it into context, that is about 2-3 months living expenses.

There are a lot of things you can do yourself to cut down on costs. Some writers will invest in software so that they can design their own covers, whereas others rely on beta readers to do their editing. These are such risky moves though, that could really harm a books marketability (covers) and readability/enjoyment (editing).

And of course, taking on all these elements yourself takes time. Time to learn. Time to do. Time writers who are struggling financially might not have.

It’s a hard one to solve

A lot of this is not an easy fix. People need to charge for their services and low paid jobs aren’t going away.

But I do think it’s something the industry as a whole can look at. There are bursaries for courses out there, although I’m not sure how many and how accessible they are. I’d definitely like to see more – both more of them and more about them.

As someone hovering on the edges, publishing feels like a very privileged industry, one that is very hard to crack without inside knowledge and money to invest. Things are changing, but as ever, very slowly. There is thankfully a lot more discussion about making publishing more accessible to POC and disabled writers, but it would be good to include writers from economically disadvantaged backgrounds too (or making more of the programmes that do exist).