Complex Numbers

What You Wish For

Today in "You can get what you want and still not be happy":

    The Unbearable Costs of Becoming a Writer  
After years of hard work and low pay, the risks I took to work in publishing are finally paying off. But now, I wonder about the price my family paid, and whether it was too steep.

When I was younger, I was always told: "Be careful what you wish for; you might just get it." So I stopped wishing.

My parents didn’t understand my job.

No one's parents understand them.

There were stretches when I made so little money writing or editing that I couldn’t blame my parents for assuming they were hobbies.

Most people think it's easy and anyone can do it. And then they try, and they think they've done a good job because they get positive feedback from those who are afraid of crushing them with negative feedback. But in reality, they suck.

I'm aware I'm probably in that category, too. After all, I've never made money from writing (or editing), unless you count GPs for WDC newsletters. That's how we're measuring success now, right?

But, okay. I get it. Sometimes outsiders don't understand that it's work, whether you're getting paid for it or not. Often rewarding work, and requiring very little physical activity, but it's no less work than, say, website development.

I became an editor by volunteering for an Asian American magazine, a nonprofit mission-driven labor of love where no one drew a salary. Ten to fifteen hours of unpaid labor a week in exchange for the editorial experience I wanted was, to me, an acceptable trade—nearly all my labor then was unpaid.

And I get this. (Obviously; I do that sort of thing, myself.) But it's a symptom of a larger problem, which is that what creative-types do is largely undervalued. Hey, can your band do this gig? We can't pay you, but you'll get experience and exposure! Say, I like your art. Can you do a poster for me? I don't have a lot of money, but you can put your contact info on it.

Then one of my favorite indie websites hired me to edit on a part-time basis. The job started at thirteen dollars an hour, twenty hours a week, and after a couple of months I was brought on full-time and granted a salary in the mid-30s.

Don't mistake my above complaints for bitterness. Would it be nice to be paid for my writing? Sure. But if that did happen, I know it would come with a raft of requirements. Like, right now, I can write about anything I want to, say anything I want to, be honest about my opinions (or at least honestly lie about them). My only restrictions are self-imposed. But consider what might happen if, say, someone approached me to do a beer blog. I'd then be beholden to them, and two of my favorite hobbies (writing and drinking beer) would become, by definition, work, with deadlines and expectations.

Everything becomes promotion, then. Hell, even the article I'm highlighting today is basically an ad for the author's book. (I know I've said this before, but that never stops me, by itself, from featuring something; writing ad copy is also a writing skill, and this is a site about writing.)

Fortunately, I don't need the money. So I can pursue it as a hobby. (Still, free beer would be a nice perk.)

But there was also a reality I had to face: I was running out of time to help my family. My diabetic father’s health was in decline, and my parents were struggling to pay for his care and medications. My husband and I couldn’t pay for full-time childcare for both our kids, let alone provide the kind of support my parents needed. The little assistance I could offer wasn’t enough to make a dent, and as my father grew sicker, my guilt and anxiety intensified.

This is understandable, too, though I neatly sidestepped a lot of it by not having kids I knew I wouldn't be able to afford.

I continue to grapple with the instability of this industry and what kind of opportunities will be available to me in the years to come, as well as larger questions about whether my editorial work was valued.

Editorial work is, if anything, even less valued than writing. Don't believe me? Pick a few articles off the internet and see if they look like an editor saw them. Or, hell, this blog, which certainly doesn't have an editor. I do try to catch obvious typos and awkwardly-phrased passages, but I don't always succeed.

I think about who gets to be a writer or an editor, who can afford to wait for that livable salary or that higher advance. Who can choose to prioritize their creative goals, take potentially career-making risks, invest precious years in this work without the guarantee of financial stability.

And this is why I chose engineering way back when. Fortunately, for me, it wasn't an either-or situation; I'm equally bad at both tech and creative stuff.