Patrick Alan

There are always some discussions going on about not being able to make a living as a full time writer.

First I get hung up on ‘making a living’. My wife couldn’t ‘make a living’ as a full-time teacher. She needed a second income in the family to support her teaching hobby…

I always find it funny that people think writing one book a year should be considered a full time job. Just because some books earn a wage that consitutes a full-time job, writing one book a year doesn’t mean it is.

Let’s do some simple math. Let’s use these conservative numbers.

100k words = book.

Say, three full drafts for completed novel. 300K words.

Let’s give a writer 500 words per hour. That’s a really conservative number, in my opinion. You know I have that whole 1000 words per hour thing.

Full time job is 40 hours per week.

300,000 / 500 / 40 = 15

15 weeks to write a book. That’s a seasonal job.

Or to look at it a different way, there are 46 working weeks in a year when you subtract (U.S.) holidays and vacation time.

300,000 / 500 / 46 = 13+ hours per week.

I am pretty sure 13 hours per week is still considered a part time job.

A full time writer should be writing three books per year. The only challenge in that is actually selling 3 books per year. This is where cross-genre, pen names, work-for-hire, etc enter the equation. And with new technology, new opportunities are popping up all over the place.

To me, anyone who doesn’t understand this, doesn’t understand what it means to be an entrepreneur. To be a freelancer. To be self-employed. These are people who believe a living wage starts at six-figures.

Sorry. You want to be self-employed? You have to hustle. Get over it.

All that said, I still have the Harper Lee dream. I’d like someone to give me a year’s salary to take a year and write my book and then have that book become pure gold.

I always imagine this conversation.
Person: “What do you do?”
HL: “I wrote a book once. It was a good book.”

It’s official. I am going. I waffled on this one quite a bit. If it wasn’t in Orlando, I wouldn’t be going this year. I’ve wanted to attend for a few years, but I’ve had the goal of a finished salable novel as a prerequisite. I’m not quite there yet.

Next year is New York City. I love that Marriott Marquis, so I’ll probably be going next year, too. But that one, I’ll hold myself to the must have novel completed.

Here’s my plan. I’m going to go to the conference and blend into the background. No one will really even notice I am there. I just want to quietly absorb everything I can.

I might have to wear my Julia Roberts look to blend in. What do you think?

If you happen to notice me hiding in the corner, approach gently. I could be a bit overwhelmed.

Here’s something bouncing around in my head.

One of the things about being unpublished and being a part of the writing community is for people to get to know your work. Let’s face it, at some level, we all size up other writers. We do it in all careers, so in this, writing is no different.

Published writers are easy to figure out. Pick up a book of theirs. Check out their sales. Check number of books published. Whatever. But for unpublished writers, we’re just a mass of aspirants with no real differentiators. Our critique partners are the ones who know our current skill.

Ok. Warning. This is going to be a long rambly post in which I eventually get to the idea that I am debating putting up a couple of short stories on the Kindle and/or Smashwords. Let me continue the ramble now.

—

Here’s the thing. I always want to know how/what someone writes. Sure, blog posts are a sample, in a way, but that doesn’t really identify me as a writer of fiction, unless you don’t believe the pool is real. (do you think I am that good with photoshop?)

Kris Rusch recently posted in her Freelancer’s guide about how easy it is to give up on yourself. In terms of writing, that’s generally how self-publishing is looked at. Here are the two posts on the topic.

http://kriswrites.com/2010/06/03/freelancers-survival-guide-giving-up-on-yourself-part-one/

http://kriswrites.com/2010/06/10/freelancers-survival-guide-giving-up-on-yourself-part-two/

I’m assuming you’ve already read them, so I’ll continue. The thing is, self-publishing is becoming viable, whether for re-issue of books that have reverted back to an author or for books that were orphaned during their initial print run, and other similar scenarios. I see self-publishing as a very viable tool for the Traditionally Published Writer Without Stigma.

For the likes of myself, the unpublished masses, it’s a dilemma. Am I giving up or pursuing a lesser path? NY is so slow. Is it my impatience that shows when I self-publish? Who says I am really ready?

I admit, whenever I meet someone online, I check their credentials if they claim they are a writer. I generally put aspirant over someone who is only self-published(again, different category from someone supplementing traditional publishing career.).

So here’s my dilemma. I’m sitting on some short stories. These are professionally edited short stories. They were essentially purchased for invite only, written on spec, themed anthologies, but the anthologies themselves never sold, even though the editor had a history of selling two per year. Honestly, I can’t tell you the elation and the crushing defeat of that combination. Yay! NO! Sad face. I really didn’t expect either scenarios. I knew a lot of the other writers that were invited, many multi-published.

I have every intent of self-publishing these short stories and a couple others AFTER I publish a novel through a traditional publisher. Actually, probably just after it is sold, not waiting the year or two until it is in print.

So, why not now? If you asked me three years ago, should an unpublished writer have a blog? I would have said no, yet I made one. Had no idea why either. The main goal was learning how to create a blog. My blog content is questionable at best.

I’m sort of tempted to publish them, just to try Amazon self-publishing and Smashwords. Tempted, but still remaining patient. Yes, I am unpublished. I’m ok with that moniker.

So, I sort of mentioned this a few weeks ago with some of my latest motivational techniques.

I challenged myself at my last RWA Chapter meeting to show up this month with a minimum of 5,000 words completed or I would pay $25 into our ‘motivational fund’ which is used for gifts for our top performers on word count/editing writing tasks.

I’ll break the news early. I made it. 5,229 new words since the last meeting.

Seven people joined me. I assume they all made it, too. I find out tomorrow.

I just checked the calendar. I had 5 weeks since the last meeting. Next meeting is only three weeks since we moved it up to avoid RWA Nationals. I’m going to challenge myself again with the same challenge. It’ll be a little bit more difficult.

I like this challenge because I like where the money goes if I fail. Given the reaction of my chapter, meaning, how many jumped right in, it seems to work for others, too.

Just figured I would share this since my other motivation technique, #1K1HR seems to be helping people. The surprising thing to me was authors under contract taking to the Put Up/Pay Up. By nature, the contract already includes that, to some degree. At least in my mind.

Happy writing!

@WolfsonLiterary: @Patrick_Alan why do you blog when your blog posts are the length of a tweet?

Hey, just wanted to point out I put up a permanent page explaining #1k1hr on twitter.

It’s over there on the right, under the ‘writing’ section.

Or you can just click HERE.

ZEBRA BUTT!

Hmm. Makes me hungry!!!

What we have here is Scenes From My Oregon Safari!

What’s he talkin’ about?

I haven’t the slightest clue.