so you want to make money writing

So you want to make money writing…

More and more these days, I get emails from people asking me how they can make money writing. I’ve given different responses over the years, but they all sound similar to this most recent one ::

[name redacted],

 

That’s quite the story, my friend. Thanks for sharing.

Off the top of my head:

 

Forget about freelance websites. 

Any job that’s going to pay anything substantial over the long haul will come from relationships or inquiries. This is basic business savvy :: generate new leads. That means (a) invest in the artists and professional writers around you, (b) invest steadily in a handful of markets at first, and (c) find a way to attract those who are unfamiliar with your work. Freelance websites are the equivalent of rich landowners who profit off of day laborers and pay them a pittance. Refuse to participate in these wage-lowering forms of oppression. I say the same thing about them as I say about Uber — just say “no.”

Focus on your craft. 

The number one problem I come across when fledgling writers ask me this question is this waning work ethic as applied to writing. Often it’s not that would-be writers can’t write. It’s that would-be writers won’t work. In my experience, most of them also haven’t learned how to learn from anything and everyone, let alone to immediately apply the things they learn to their craft. Others refuse to write every day. When I worked night shift at the hospital, I asked permission from the floor nurses to write in the nurse’s lounge during the 3:30am no-soul’s hour. They always let me if it was (1) a slow night and (2) I had my rounds and prep done. So I learned to work my butt off in the hospital in order to make time to write. Sure, I’d be on call with my buzzer. Sure, I’d be surrounded by the rooms of the sick. Sure, I’d get interrupted frequently to answer questions about patient history. But I treasure many of the stories I wrote in that time because I was working hard at my job so that I’d have room to learn how to tell a story.

Writing is a job just like any job. It’s work and since here on Earth the environment in which work happens is cursed, there are days in which I hate going in to work. But it’s not the work I hate. It’s the environment. So I lower my head, set my mind on learning something from the experience, and focus on building my craft in the midst of adverse circumstances. I wrote on napkins when I sold diamonds and the mall was dead. I wrote on printer paper when I was selling and teaching instruments. I wrote on the backs of scripts when I was a DJ at the radio station. Of course, if any of this creates a conflict of interest in your current job, by all means work on your writing in your free time alone, but I’m assuming that you’re already doing that as often as you can.

Don’t worry about which genre you write,
just write
.

Every site you read that gives advice for any form of freelance will tell you to specialize, specialize, specialize. They’ll tell you to do this because it makes your “product” — i.e. your self — infinitely more marketable.

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I think the American obsession with specialization is a disease, a product of the capitalistic factory mindset and has nothing to do with the classical mind or a classical education. You are a soul, not a product, and there are many more sides to you than the one. I say dabble in copywriting, dabble in editing, dabble in writing fiction or poetry and find all of those things that make you come alive and do them. We don’t need more websites devoted to writing cat poems. We don’t need more businesses devoted to subscription razor services. We need more writers who have come alive, whose minds have marinated in the great compost heap of classic literature. C.S. Lewis, Chesterton, Coleridge, Byron and even J.K. Rowling did this among many, many others.

Don’t sell yourself short,
charge what you’re worth.

My mistake early on was overestimating what I could charge in little old Joplin, Missouri. The average rate for most freelance copywriting or editing nationwide is $65 / hour. But that’s the absolute outer ring of what any of the businesses in Joplin (or any municipality under 100,000 people) will support. So don’t overestimate yourself or your market.

On the other hand, most freelancers I come across underestimate their capabilities. I know one girl who’s charging twenty-five bucks for a four-hour photo session including prints. That’s egregiously too low — she’s getting little more than $6 an hour in a city that pays $14 for mopping floors at Whole Foods. And that’s just for her time — it’s not including her costs as the sole proprietor of her business, her need for insurance, her taxes, etcetera.

And for all that is good and holy, stop giving away your work for free. The plumber gets paid to plunge. The designer gets paid to design. Charge something. Barter if you have to, but a worker is always worth his pay. This includes, but is not limited to: story consulting, editing, proofreading, style revisions, copywriting, fiction, nonfiction, poetry, story editors for films, technical writing, grant writing (and really all development work), business writing, blogging (if you want to do that full-time, I don’t),  screenwriting, playwriting, and transcription.

Buy a Writer’s Market.

I repeat this in every chunk of advice I offer, and I’m still amazed at how many people don’t even know that the Market exists. Buy one – it’s the combined phonebook and addressbook and playbook for where and how to sell what you write. Buy one. Buy one.

Buy a Writer’s Market. Seriously.

Write.
Rewrite.
Then write your rewrite over again from scratch.
Submit. Get rejected. Repeat. 

There’s no shortcut other than meaningful time intended toward a specific goal. Just like learning languages, time at task. Time at task.

My good friend Ben Grace is a songwriter. He just recently created this tattoo for 2015 and put it on his forearm ::

tattoo

 

Play. Write. Record. Repeat.

Good idea for a songwriter. For the writer, it’s ::

Write. Submit. Get rejected. Repeat.

Read The War of Art
and Turning Pro
.

This advice is for all artists reading this. The books will explain themselves.

Reinvest Your Profits

Albert Einstein said the most powerful force in the universe is exponential interest. Warren Buffett puts this at the top of his list of ways to get rich.

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But the best illustration is dominoes ::

Consider contributing to
the publishing landscape at large
.

Everyone and their dog will email me and the other writers and agents and editors I know with a manuscript. Everyone.

“Read my work! Read my work!”

I get it. I understand. I lost friends early on by badgering them with my writing. Let me save you the pain:

You know what’s unique? A writer who stacks chairs and picks up cans after a literary reading. A writer who starts a unique fiction magazine that combines good literature with local culture. A writer who starts a podcast. A writer who, as Tim Grahl says, is relentlessly helpful for those in the publishing world.

The problem right now isn’t that we have too many writers or even that we have too many books. The problem is that our overall care for the culture and the landscape of publishing is waning, is struggling to keep up with the amount of quality work that could exist in a broader context. Poetry especially, but luckily, as C.D. Wright says, Poetry can live on very little.

So make it easier, sweeter, better for someone to enjoy reading and you’ll attract people to the things you write. The moment I started doing this was the moment I stopped acting like a dude with pamphlets in Penn Station and started letting people come to me to read my work. In most cases concerning American life, I think people quote the following line in order to justify risky and even stupid ventures, but when we talk about culture care it’s completely true ::

If you build it, they will come.

There’s more, but that’ll do for now.
• Lancelot •
image via frankieleon

 

Readers get free stories and artists get encouraged ::

lance's monogram new

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  1. Helen Ross

    Thanks Lancelot. Wonderful advice, as usual.

    1. lanceschaubert

      Thanks Helen. How are you?

      1. Helen Ross

        Hi Lance. I am well – thanks for asking. The last couple of years or so have been quite challenging and thus a reflective time for me (but all positive) which is why I have been quiet on contributing to your ‘comments box on your site’. But I read your posts and keep up to date with your valuable advice and your projects.

        1. lanceschaubert

          So sorry to hear that, but I’m super glad that you’ve had a positive time. I find most of my readers are silent, for whatever reason, so you shouldn’t feel alone in that. Stats don’t reflect a waning readership, just radio silence.

          Thanks so much for staying in touch. Getting ready to release a bundle of previously published short stories.

  2. Warren Buffett Stock Picks :: How He Choses • The Showbear Family Circus

    […] Wondering at how your portfolio can end up looking like an undervalued set of Warren Buffett stock picks? I’m here to help you find companies the inefficient market has overlooked. I want you to handicap your picks and beat the SnP 500 in the long run. His methodology I added early on to my writing toolkit. I also added it to the list I give authors who want to make money writing. […]

Quick note from Lance about this post: when you choose to comment (or share this post with your friends) you help other readers just like you.

How?

Well, see, your comments & sharing whisper a few things to those who come after you:

The first is that this site is a safe place to speak up & stay curious. That it's civil. That discussion is encouraged. That there's no such thing as a stupid question (being a student of Socrates, I really and truly believe this). That talking to one another and growing together is more important than anything we could possibly publish. That the point is growing in virtue and growing together and growing wise. That discovery is invention, deference is originality, that we all can rise together. The only folks I'm going to take comments down from are obvious jerks who argue in bad faith, don't stay curious, or actively make personal attacks. And, frankly, I'd rather we talk here than on some social media farm — I will never show ads and the only thing I'm selling anywhere on the site or my mailing list is just the stuff I make.

You're also helping folks realize that anything you & they build together is far more important than anything you come to me to read. I take the things I write about seriously, but I don't take myself seriously: I play the fool, I hate cults of personality, and I also don't really like being the center of attention (believe it or not). I would much rather folks connect because of an introduction I've made or because they commented with one another back and forth and then build something beautiful together. My favorite contributions have been lifelong business and love partnerships from two people who have forgotten I introduced them. Some of my closest friends NOW I literally met on another blog's comment section fifteen years ago. I would love for that to happen here — let two of you meet and let me fade into the background.

Last, you help me revise. I'm wrong. Often. I'm not embarrassed to admit it or worried about being cancelled or publicly shamed. I make a fool out of myself (that's sort of the point). So as I get feedback, I can say, "I was wrong about that" and set a model for curious, consistent learning, and growing in wisdom. I'm blind to what I don't know and as grows the island of my knowledge so grows the shoreline of my ignorance. It's the recovery of innocence on the far end of experience: a child is in a permanent state of wonder. So are the wise: they aren't afraid of saying, "I don't know. That's new: please teach me." That's my goal, comments help. And I read all reviews: my skin's tough, but that's not license to be needlessly cruel. We teach one another our habits and there's a way to civilly demolish an idea without demolishing another person: just because I personally can take the world's meanest 1-star review doesn't mean we should teach one another how to be crueler on the internet.

For three magical reasons — your brave curiosity, your community, & my ignorance:

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