Some honest thoughts about writing fiction as a career
A caveat here that in this post I am not talking about being a writer in general, but very specifically about being a novelist, writing fiction, and being traditionally published (as I have said many times, I know nothing about the indie publishing world!).
My dad wanted me to be a lawyer. Like many (most?) writers, I was academic. I did well at school, I was pretty quick at most subjects and I was very good at English and assimilating a lot of information and then, well… writing about it in an accurate and relatively concise way.
(If this sounds like I’m bragging, please let me assure you that I was terrible at anything that involved graphs or numbers and I still have nightmares about my A Level Economics Data Response paper. I was also painfully shy and terrible at sport).
Anyway, I did not want to be a lawyer.
I wanted to be a novelist. From the moment I could read, I wanted to be a novelist.
I’ll save you the usual story about me writing my first book aged 6 because I’m sure you’ve heard that kind of thing a million times, and it’s likely true for you too. But all I ever wanted to do ‘when I grew up’ was be a novelist.
I’m not sure, however, that anyone in my childhood ever discussed this with me as though it might actually be a real option, and so it always felt like a fantasy, much akin to growing up to be a princess (respect to K-Mid for pulling that one off).
I always expected that I would have to have some kind of other ‘job’ as well.
Being a novelist for a job didn’t feel like something that was possible, somehow. It certainly wasn’t the kind of job that people at my school talked about.
We were expected to get traditional degrees and go on to work as, well, yes, lawyers, or accountants or for banks or in HR or, if we loved science, then perhaps we’d become doctors or vets.
So when I left uni (with a rather unhelpful but very interesting degree in Classics), I disappointed everyone (but especially my dad) by declaring that I wanted to be a journalist.
It was the closest thing to ‘being a novelist’ that I could think of that also sounded like a real job.
I did love being a journalist. I did it for around ten years in the end, and I worked my way up at a major magazine company, eventually becoming the Managing Editor of a big interior design website.
But I still always wanted to write fiction, and so I did alongside my job, landing a literary agent at the tender age of 26.
Fast forward a few more years, and I finally got a proper book deal.
I won’t go into more detail about that because I’ve already written about my publication journey extensively, and this is meant to be about what it’s like once you have, technically, ‘made it’ and been invited into the coveted inner sanctum of TRADITIONALLY PUBLISHED AUTHORS.
My journey to publication (so far!) →
Traditionally published authors: also known as authors who have actually made it into a job. Who have been paid, by OTHER PEOPLE, for the weird stories they made up.
I can’t tell you how strange it was to finally be paid (by a big, corporate entity, no less!) for my fiction.
Being paid to be a princess. It sounds kind of miraculous when you put it like that, doesn’t it?
My first book was released in 2018, and I have released a book every year ever since, meaning that I have been working as a professional author - that I have had a ‘career’ as a novelist - for six years now.
However, I still don’t see it as a career.
The thing that I’ve realised over the past six years is that everyone in my childhood was right. Especially everyone who thought it would be more sensible to be a lawyer (I’m looking at you, Dad) and all the other very smart authors I know who trained as lawyers first so that they’d always have something solid to fall back on.
So here’s my controversial statement of the day: writing fiction is not a ‘real’ job, and being a novelist is not a real career.
It’s not a real career because:
There is absolutely no stability whatsoever
There is no clear path of progression, no obvious career ladder to climb
A depressingly high percentage of authors earn the most they ever earn from writing right at the beginning of their ‘career’, then nothing ever again
You can do it at any age, and you might have tons of experience or absolutely none and it doesn’t seem to make any difference
Ditto qualifications and training
Financially, the remuneration makes no sense. Two writers can have the same amount of talent and expend the same amount of energy and write equally brilliant books and one might earn millions while the other earns nothing at all
It is not a transferable skill. Obviously, writing itself is a transferable skill, but writing fiction is completely different from writing journalism and not the sort of thing you can offer ‘for hire’ (except possibly as a ghostwriter, but even those kind of jobs don’t have any stability or security)
Show me another ‘career’ that works in the same way as that of a novelist’s?
I know that lots of arts jobs are similar in the sense that there are no guarantees and that you can be amazingly talented but still not make it, but even singers have a skill that can be put to use in a more commercial sense if their solo artist career doesn’t work out (eg they can become wedding singers, or do corporate events. No one wants to hire a novelist to write a novel about their wedding!).
That’s a crap example, but I hope you get what I mean.
I guess songwriting is similar to writing fiction - I know because my other half recently did an MA in Songwriting and much of his experience of trying to get a publishing deal for his songs is very similar to those of novelists trying to get a book deal.
Why writing novels is not a career
I did an Arvon course when I was in my early 20s, around the time I signed with my literary agent.
I remember that the tutor on the course said to me that she didn’t know of any authors who didn’t have either:
a) a private income (I still don’t really know what this means, but I guess it means they were born rich?)
OR
b) a wealthy spouse to support them
OR
c) another job
As I had neither of the first two things (and still don’t), I found this deeply depressing. Was I doomed before I even began?
We all know that advances are lower than they ever have been, that it’s even harder to get a book deal, and that when you do get one, it’s even harder still to break out or get your book seen by the masses.
More than ten years later, I can see why that tutor said that, and sadly, apart from a handful of ‘lottery winning’ authors who got big book deals and whose books subsequently went on to sell well, I don’t know of many authors - especially not female authors - who don’t have either a) nor b) nor c).
It makes me mad.
Authors should be paid fairly. Even if they have rich spouses!
I firmly believe that traditional advances should be at least a living wage, across the board, rather than some authors getting millions upfront and others getting nothing.
I am sure there are reasons that advances are done the way they are, but I have yet to read an article that convinces me it’s ever in the best interests of the authors.
However, being angry about this won’t change things. Being angry is a waste of energy.
“I’ve come to accept writing fiction for what it really is: a vocation”
Over the past six years, writing has paid me more money than any of the other jobs I’ve ever had.
And yet, and yet…
I worry about money all the time.
I have no job security. And the truth is I may never earn another penny from my fiction.
Except for one final advance payment I am due when my next book is released in 2026, there is no way of knowing if anyone will ever pay me for my writing again.
That’s just the truth of it.
Do not go into writing fiction thinking of it as a career. Because it isn’t one.
It’s a vocation. And you need to adjust your mindset to accept that, or you’ll go mad!
I appreciated this recent, blisteringly honest article in Esquire: has it ever been harder to make a living as an author? →
It was good to see someone speaking the truth.
But it’s not all doom and gloom, I promise!
Here’s how I cope with writing ‘as a career’:
1) I do something else too
I work almost full-time as a web designer.
It’s so important for my mental health to know that I have another source of income.
Even though I know, comparatively speaking, I have earned well from my writing, as I said, there is no security, I live in one of the most expensive parts of England and I have a family to support.
I am lucky because I love doing web design.
I am also lucky because I did earn enough one year to have a year where all I did was write, full-time, and that experience taught me that I did not enjoy it!
Why I hated writing full time →
I am SO grateful for that year. It taught me a lot about myself. And taught me that, even putting aside the job-security-aspect of being a full-time novelist, the loneliness and pressure of having only one nebulous thing to pin all your self-esteem on is enough to send anyone mad.
You want to write? Then write. But don’t make it the only thing in your life.
Make sure you have something else - something more stable - to keep you going when things get tough. Because (unless you are one of the very rare 2% of ‘brand name authors’ who will always be published) they will!
2) I always come back to the writing
But on that note - always try to remember that the WRITING itself is the important thing.
The writing itself is what really matters - your own artistic expression. Not the publishing side of things.
Write because you love it. Write because you can’t not write. Write because it helps you make sense of the world.
Do not write to be published. Do not write to become rich. Do not write for fame and glory.
Writing itself has to be its own reward - and it truly, really is, if you can shut out all the noise around it.
Writing is the best thing in the world.
3) I accept that writing brings me more important rewards than money
Writing is incredibly important for my mental health.
When I don’t write, I find myself having weird dreams. I’m an incredibly anxious person and writing really helps ‘level me out’.
It also helps me process things that are worrying me, gives me the chance to hyperfocus on things I’m fascinated by, and offers me the space to be endlessly creative - which really is a gift to the soul.
In these ways, writing brings its own rewards. I try to remember this when I feel frustrated by the state of my ‘career’.
4) I view writing novels like buying lottery tickets
And finally, I have adjusted my mindset so that I now view each of my books as a lottery ticket.
I write it, and I send it out into the world and I wait and see if my numbers come up.
Sometimes they do, mostly they don’t. What will be will be.
But you have to be in it to win it, and if you want to win ‘it’ whatever ‘it’ may be - some intangible, indefinable sense of success - you have to throw your books out into the world and wait and see what happens.
Do not expect anything - aim to be pleasantly surprised!
Hope I cope with the ‘writing life’
There’s a logical, slightly rigid part of my brain that finds the life of a novelist very difficult to accept!
To me, it seems obvious that the more you write, the better you get, and therefore the more you should be respected for your work, and the more you should earn.
But that just doesn’t apply when it comes to writing fiction.
So in order to cope, I treat writing as my vocation. It’s something that’s in my blood, something I was born to do, and something I am sure I will do forever, whether or not I’m being published.
The life of a novelist is undoubtedly a difficult one, but at the same time I do think it’s important to remember just how lucky we are to have this vocation - to have this drive and passion to do something that’s honestly so difficult.
A life without that kind of drive must be incredibly unfulfilling.
We are rockstars, in our own way. And being a rockstar is just cool. Right? 😆
