Playing at Being a Writer

As someone who's been writing since high school, it's still hard to justify my "hobby" (because that's what it is, whether I like it or not) to the people around me—especially those who just want me to settle down with a good job that will provide a pension for retirement. Once, I had high aspirations to be a novelist—even the word sounds important—but as the years pass by, I'm becoming disenchanted. It seems that books themselves aren't selling how they once did either. I guess the allure of Netflix is just too strong.

But, as I'm typing away and pulling at the threads of my ideas, sometimes I have this flash of unease: am I wasting my life by doing this? I'm not making any money at this, so is it not important after all?

Let me start by saying I've made less than two thousand dollars from my writing over the past five years. I won a few contests through the college I attended, but it was a small pond and the creative writing department wasn't exactly lucrative. And then this year I found both Vocal Media and Medium. Over the past four months, I've made less than two hundred dollars between both sites. If I were back in Stephen King's era, that might be some cash to work with, but in 2021? Not gonna happen.

And I feel that I have to add a disclaimer whenever I mention writing for either site: "Oh, it's just something I do for fun. I'm not serious about it." From this perspective, you might view writing as the affair I'm trying to hide—and I'm passionately in love with it, despite how much I try to protest too much. At the end of the day, maybe I'm just pretending to spare myself hurt in some way.

While we may be taught from a young age not to talk about money under any circumstance—"that's so tacky"—sometimes I feel that is all my family focuses on. They want to know what job you have, whether you're making a decent living, and just how you intend to buy that house and support those kids you're definitely going to have (yeah, that one's a topic for another day). Meanwhile, I'm the recent college grad who can't even find the main career to "fall back on" for my trusty side-gig writing.

"As long as writing makes you happy, that's what matters," someone said to me. The next day, he blasted me for feeling happy that I'd gotten a bonus on Vocal. "That kind of money's not going to pay the bills."

And there I stood, keeping my tears to myself, because it does hurt to have something I work at so much be chastised because it doesn't yield the almighty income people feel it should. No, I'm not going to be that career novelist who lands a six-figure film deal. No, I'm not going to be on the New York Times bestseller list. No, there won't be a Wikipedia page for me after I die.

Yet...even so, something persists. I'm still typing this out, still stringing words along into sentences, still keeping a stiff upper lip while trying to convince myself I'm not wasting my time.

The toxicity, I suppose, is that society tells us that everything we do should be on an exchange system where, if it does not balance out to some kind of money, then it shouldn't be done at all. "You're not making money at this thing? Go find something else." I'm at the point where I never mention writing except when explicitly asked. After all, just how many times can I see someone's eyes dim as they say, full of pity, "Oh, you're not published"?

So many of the writers I know just say it's a hobby—and that's okay for them. But I'm craving something more. I'm sick of calling myself "aspiring" for year after year. Only to myself, in the mirror, do I say the words, "I'm a writer."

It just feels like a lie when I say it to anyone else.

When will that change? Soon, I hope. Someday.

To everyone in my life, I'm just playing at being a writer.

To myself, I'm just waiting for the validation that tells me I'm not a crazy fool after all.

If you'd like to help a writer out, go ahead on over to my profile page and take a gander at what else I've been concocting. I'll let you know when the big bucks start rolling in.