Before and After the Book Deal. Courtney Maum

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СКАЧАТЬ Supplementing your income, a.k.a. the side hustle

      Unlike full-time teaching or editorial positions, there is no annual salary for “writing.” Most of the creative writers I know seesaw between perilous financial comfort and living hand-to-mouth, and this includes writers that the outside world judges as successful. With many independent presses offering advances in (and under) the $5,000 range, it’s virtually impossible to live on such an advance unless you (or someone else) is supplementing your income. Given that they are divided up over a number of years, and that significant percentages have to go to a writer’s agent, the IRS, and regular bill payments, even giant advances net a writer a yearly salary on par with that of an associate professor, but this “salary” comes without health insurance and it has a stop date: you can’t continue to earn such a wage unless you are writing, selling, and promoting new books every year. This is a grueling pace.

      Accordingly, many writers (most writers) take on side hustles: short- or long-term gigs that supplement their incomes while keeping their minds engaged. For creative writers, the industries within which they can apply their skills are manifold indeed. Author Alex Marzano-Lesnevich found themself writing copy for a marinara-sauce jar label when the owners of an Italian restaurant reached out to them after reading a Modern Love column about snake ownership and sexual identity that they wrote in 2011. (Admittedly, it takes a few leaps to get from snakes to marinara, but the restaurant made those leaps.) Author Annie DeWitt wrote entries for The Princeton Review’s Best Law Schools while she was at Columbia (“It became the underground side hustle for a lot of MFAers,” she admits). Rolf Yngve helps former inmates write their résumés through a veterans’ program called Leave No One Behind, and author Nelly Reifler was a monthly columnist for Electrical World Magazine—a column, by the way, that she was in no way educated to write. (“The editor said it was easier to teach good writers how electricity works than to teach electrical engineers to write well,” Nelly says.)

      The host of the Rally Reading Series, Ryan D. Matthews, once wrote birthday party guides for Party City that focused on the plight of stressed moms with little time (Ryan remembers “Yoda Soda” as a particularly inspired article of his), and author H. W. Peterson taught writing to engineering students (they’re coming for your job, Nelly!) until she found a gig writing dialogue for Amazon’s virtual assistant, Alexa, through a contract company she still works for today.

      Sex sells, but it sells better with good copy, and so it is that many of our writer friends have side hustles in erotica. The writer Kara Leighann wrote DVD cover copy for gay soft-core films like Hunkboat 1 (and 2 and 3), Joyland publisher Emily Schultz wrote copy for a cable news show where the anchors stripped while reporting, and—while not exactly erotic, unless used in a certain manner—author Amy Bloom wrote descriptions for a line of body products scented like baked goods. (Shout out to edible products, y’all—I wrote about them for a year at Victoria’s Secret, myself.)

      As suggested by these examples, copywriting can be an energetic side gig for writers who know how to meet deadlines. Editing, proofreading, translating (if you speak more than one language fluently), ghostwriting, sensitivity reading, tutoring, and public relations work are equally great options, but how do you get these gigs?

      First of all, you’ll need a track record of your writing and/or other creative work. An author website is a good place to include links and excerpts, and it will spare you the hassle of sending potential clients your ten-gigabyte portfolio. The social-networking platform LinkedIn has a reputation as the weird uncle of social media, but employers do look for full- and part-time candidates on this site, so it behooves you to keep an up-to-date professional profile there. At the time of writing, Sophia Amoruso, the brain behind the Girlboss empire, announced that she was starting a LinkedIn-like platform exclusively for women, so keep your eyes out for that. Most of the writers cited above found their gigs through personal connections, friends, colleagues, or people they were already working with, but I’ve personally had success with job-recruitment agencies like 24 Seven Talent or Artisan Creative, myself. (Make sure to specify whether you are looking for full-time or part-time work and whether you’re willing to commute or relocate when you sign up with one of these sites.)

      Of course, many writers supplement any income they are earning from their writing with teaching positions, but it’s important to note that you will need either an MFA or a published book (or both) to apply for most creative-writing positions in the academic market—a beast that we will tussle with in book two. If we can’t actually help you find a side hustle, at least you know you’re gonna need one. Blogger Elna Cain’s informative article on finding freelance writing gigs on ElnaCain.com, as well as the online resource center for writers, The Write Life, are both great places to start.

To teach or not to teach

      In After the Book Deal, we’ll explore the finer points of going on the academic market, but at this juncture (especially if you’re in an MFA program or contemplating attending one), it’s worth asking yourself if teaching is the right career move for your future. Teaching is a popular—one might even say default—option for writers and graduates with humanities degrees, but with more articles and statistics coming out about the restricted job market for MFA and PhD grads, a young writer could be forgiven for asking why.

      “I’m currently grading final papers and so I’m not sure that I should commit any of my feelings about teaching to print,” wrote one college teacher who preferred to remain anonymous, “other than to suggest that writers explore ALL POSSIBLE ALTERNATIVES before deciding that teaching is the best career choice for a writer.”

      A few benefits up-front: teaching allows writers to stay engaged with the subject and discipline they’re passionate about; it grants access to other great minds and minds that might be even greater with a little bit of encouragement; it provides exceptional networking opportunities along with a supportive community of like-minded people who understand the ups and downs of the writing life. And, of course, there is the lure of having your summers off to write. Except, hold on. Without even addressing a reality in which responsibilities/life/offspring exist, the truth is that most writers (especially adjuncts) have to use their summers to supplement their income, prepare the fall semester’s courses if they have a teaching job, or try to find one if they don’t.

      For most writers who enter academia, landing a tenure-track teaching position is the Holy Grail. Job security! A craftsman bungalow! Sabbaticals! Tweed coats! It’s worth slaving away as an adjunct for a couple years in order to make it to nirvana, right?

      Unfortunately, young writers and students aren’t indoctrinated to the reality of just how hard these tenured (and tenure-track) positions are to get. In an article for Vox, a former tenure-tracker named Oliver Lee put things into perspective. “I can’t overstate how rare this opportunity is: Tenure-track jobs at large state universities are few and far between. Landing one without serving a postdoctoral appointment or working as a visiting assistant professor is about as likely as landing a spot on an NBA team with a walk-on tryout—minus the seven-figure salary, naturally.”

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