The big lie about writing and getting rich

There's a modern obsession about a mythical connection between writing and making tons of money on the internet. At every turn, I encounter some version of this question recently asked on Quora, "Through what ways can I become wealthy if I am an extremely talented writer?"

Leonid Pasternak - The Passion of creation (public domain image)

It brings me back to a wonderful moment when I got to meet one of my personal heroines as a teenager. I read a book called The Cloud while I was an exchange student in Germany. It still hasn't been translated into English, so this was a challenge, but it was so well-written and the story was so gripping that I was hooked. The author, Gudrung Pausewang, was a very well-known author in Germany at the time and I read several of her other books and loved them all.  English speakers may not know her but Germans certainly did in the 1990s.

A few months after I read that first book, a foreign friend of mine had to visit a sweet German lady who was a friend of his father's to deliver something. He asked if I would like to go along because he'd heard that the old woman was a writer. Ironically, he was from Czechoslovakia (Pausewang's birthplace) and he didn't know her name. 

I went with him that day. And yes, the woman was my newly discovered favorite German author. I was blown away to meet such a staggering figure. 

But I was also a little disappointed. I assumed that being a famous, best selling author during her lifetime meant that she would be wealthy. Instead she lived in a humble cottage amid flowering shrubs with little more than the essentials and her bookcases. She was far from wealthy, although otherwise she lived up to my expectations in wit, wisdom and sheer presence. 

Gudrun Pausewang, author portrait

This was one of the hard lessons of my youth. Fabulously talented writers don't become wealthy by writing. Period.

If they become wealthy, which is rare, they do it by having a relative in the publishing business, by being a celebrity in some other capacity (actor, well-known psychologist, president, etc.), by developing excellent marketing skills, by investing inherited or previously acquired financial assets (in marketing), by utilizing interpersonal manipulation and similar pursuits. 

Writing is an adjunct skill. It is helpful to many other careers or conditions, but it isn't the primary vehicle.

When I was an up-and-coming journalism intern in 1999, one of my mentors gave me some good perspective:  "Writers who are good enough to write for a top newspaper are a dime a dozen. But not many make it. The real deciding factors are connections and bull-headed persistence." 

It's as true today as it was in the 1990s--probably more so.

The vast majority of people who make a living writing actually make a living through using (rather than wasting) some degree of prior celebrity, through skillfully working social or family connections and through intelligently investing money in marketing. Despite the fact that these sorts of careers are out of reach for most people, they still require motivation and hard work even for those born into privilege.

Here's the cold hard facts about publishing today.

• There are many poorly written, moderately successful books. These books are successful based purely on other skills or preconditions. There are a few wildly successful, well-written books. These combine other skills/conditions with excellent writing.
• There are thousands upon thousands of fantastic, rock-your-world books that are languishing in obscurity. They had the benefit of good writing but the writer lacked other conditions or skills necessary to make them successful.
• Obviously, there are also millions upon millions of crappy, boring books also languishing in obscurity (camouflaging the relatively few good ones) written by authors who lacked both the conditions and skills to make money and the ability too write well. That's true but it, unfortunately, doesn't mean that just because your book is great, you will find success.

So, when I'm asked about what a talented writer should do, I have my own set of advice based on today's conditions:

• First, determine if you really can write well. Get some independent, very critical opinions from professionals who don't know you. Insist that you want a real assessment.
• If it turns out that you can write "extremely well" AND you have one of the prized pre-conditions (some celebrity in a field, a lot of inherited money and/or social and family connections in media, publishing and/or entertainment industries), I would suggest you spend the next ten years perfecting your writing skills, writing a minimum of 2,000 focused words per day. And if you stick with it, you have a reasonable chance of at least making some money from "writing," even though you will actually be making money from capitalizing on your pre-existing conditions and there may be a lot of other ways you could do that that would be more lucrative.
• If you don't have the preconditions but you are assured that your writing is spectacular, decide if you love writing beyond anything else. If so, spend the next ten years developing your writing further as described, while working a marketing or media job as hard as you possibly can. With a large dose of luck, you might be moderately successful. though you will have to accept that those born into better preconditions will always outpace you.
• However, if you are assured that your writing is excellent and you have a job or a life you can tolerate, just write. Forget about becoming wealthy and write. Pity the poor fools who think wealth is important when they already have the joy of writing.

I have made a living writing in one way or another most of my adult life. However, most of that time was spent writing what an editor told me to write in the style that a boss wanted. For me "getting rich writing" would mean having the financial independence to write the stories I have always wanted to read without having to worry about the next paycheck.

What does getting rich mean to you? Do you have a passion that you'd love to make your living at? How much marketing and networking can you do before that becomes your primary occupation? What are you willing to do to follow your passion? I love to hear from you. Comment using the comment's button on the lower left and share this post with your friends using the button on the lower right.