{"id":1251,"date":"2009-11-12T20:55:00","date_gmt":"2009-11-12T20:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1251"},"modified":"2009-11-12T20:55:00","modified_gmt":"2009-11-12T20:55:00","slug":"writers-and-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1251","title":{"rendered":"Writers and Money"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am back from the American Academy of Religion meeting in Montreal, of which more later, where I also collected a freelance-editing check that I was owed.<\/p>\n

When I collected nine days’ worth of mail at the post office, I was happy to see that another check that was “in the mail” was in fact in the mail<\/em>.<\/p>\n

It’s not always that way, as SF writer John Scalzi makes clear in this blog post about writers and money.<\/a><\/p>\n

3. Writer pay is generally low and generally inconsistent. And if one writes fiction for some\/all of one\u2019s writing output, especially so. I\u2019ve written in detail about writing rates and payment before so it\u2019s not necessary to go into detail again right at the moment. But what it means is that if one is a writer, one does a fair amount of work for not a whole lot of money, and then has to wait for that payment to arrive more or less at the pleasure of the person sending the check. Unfortunately, writers like pretty much everyone else have fixed expenses (mortgage\/rent, bills etc), and those people generally do not wait to be paid at the pleasure of the writer; you pay your electric bill regularly or you don\u2019t get electricity.<\/em><\/p>\n

I am reminded of a writer friend’s favorite line: “My retirement plan is a family history of early heart attacks.”<\/p>\n

So far, however, he has outlived his father.<\/p>\n

The only worse idea than writing is getting a PhD in Pagan studies. At least a couple of times a month I hear from someone who wants to do that and who wants advice on which graduate school to choose.<\/p>\n

It’s cheaper to go to the tattoo shop and have them tattoo “Unemployable in Academia” somewhere on your body.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am back from the American Academy of Religion meeting in Montreal, of which more later, where I also collected a freelance-editing check that I was owed. When I collected nine days’ worth of mail at the post office, I was happy to see that another check that was “in the mail” was in fact […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[12],"class_list":["post-1251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-kb","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3313,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3313","url_meta":{"origin":1251,"position":0},"title":"The Care and Feeding of Writers","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 18, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"\"The writer was first domesticated by the Chinese, in 3400 B.C. Although the keeping of writers has been popular among the aristocracy for millennia, it has become widespread in the last few centuries as the working masses have accrued more time and resources to devote to the care of others.\"\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"writing\"","block_context":{"text":"writing","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=writing"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1762,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1762","url_meta":{"origin":1251,"position":1},"title":"Freelancing: the Horror","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 14, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Via Rod Dreher's new blog, Macroculture, comes this essay by Richard Morgan on the horrors of freelancing. By the time that I finished it, I was thinking of Knut Hamsun's novel\u00a0 Hunger. See the movie version\u2014I saw it as a teenager, and how I ever became a writer afterwards, I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"writing\"","block_context":{"text":"writing","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=writing"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13693,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=13693","url_meta":{"origin":1251,"position":2},"title":"20 Years of British Paganism: Free Zoom Lecture with Glastonbury-based Writer Liz Williams","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 21, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"UPDATE: This event has been postponed. I do not know why -- I just got the email from \"The Zoom Team.\" I will post when it is re-scheduled. Sad. Liz Williams is a science fiction and fantasy writer living in Glastonbury, England, where she is co-director of a witchcraft supply\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Britain\"","block_context":{"text":"Britain","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=britain"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/liz-williams.webp?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/liz-williams.webp?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/liz-williams.webp?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/liz-williams.webp?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/liz-williams.webp?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/liz-williams.webp?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":2680,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2680","url_meta":{"origin":1251,"position":3},"title":"V.S. Naipaul’s Rules for Writers","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 27, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"V.S. Naipaul's rules for writers\u2014some of them are very apt for the Web\u2014start with \"1. Do not write long sentences. A sentence should not have more than ten or twelve words.\" I made Naipaul's acquaintance, in the literary sense, as a fifth-former at d\u00e9Carteret College in Mandeville, Jamaica, which I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"writing\"","block_context":{"text":"writing","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=writing"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":658,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=658","url_meta":{"origin":1251,"position":4},"title":"A hare's breath escape\u2022 I\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 1, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"A hare's breath escape\u2022 I just finished indexing Her Hidden Children, much helped by the fact that I could find search terms by letting Adobe Acrobat search PDF files of all chapters. But before you index a book, you need to strategize about the book's purpose as well as the\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2056,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2056","url_meta":{"origin":1251,"position":5},"title":"From Slate, America’s Two Literary Cultures","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 30, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"This article on \"America's two distinct literary cultures\" (via University Diaries) touched me because I almost went down the Master of Fine Arts in writing road myself\u2014and of course I taught alongside people who had done so. After graduating from Reed College with what amounted to a BFA, I was\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"writing\"","block_context":{"text":"writing","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=writing"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1251\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}