CHAPTER 1

Don't Quit Your Day Job

"In America you can make a fortune as a writer, but not a living."

—James Michener

Alas, this has always been the case. A few writers get rich; the rest eke out aliving or are subsidized by inheritance or a patient spouse. Almost all writershave had to work another job to keep from starving.

A survey in 1978 by PEN, the international literary organization, was sodepressing that the organization never bothered to update it. The survey foundthat the median annual income earned by published book writers was $4,700, with68 percent making less than $10,000, and 9 percent earning nothing.

According to the latest from the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics, beginningsalaries for newspaper staff writers and editorial assistants top off at awhopping $21,000 annually—making them some of the lowest paying jobs of all.After five years on the job, they can expect to make about $30,000.

Senior editors at the largest newspapers average only about $67,000 as a topsalary.

These are the salaried positions; a large proportion of writers and editorsfreelance, making their annual salaries even iffier, and job securitynonexistent.

The most William Shakespeare earned for writing a play was £8 ($1,325 in today'smoney). He never made more than an annual income of £20 ($3,313) from hiswriting. Luckily, his acting career paid a lot better, and he owned some realestate, making him fairly prosperous.

Harriet Beecher Stowe got lucky. She was just a "poor professor's wife" when shewrote Uncle Tom's Cabin. Her book sold 3,000 copies on its day of publication,and within a year it had sold more than 300,000 copies in the United Statesalone.

"To coin one's brain into silver is, to my thinking, the hardest job in theworld."

—Edgar Allan Poe

Poe should know. It took him eighteen months of badgering to get paid after theNew York Mirror published one of his poems. The poem was "The Raven," and theoverdue payment was $10 ($178 in today's money).

"With the proceeds of my last novel, I purchased a small handbarrow, on which myguests' luggage is wheeled from the station to my house. It needs a coat ofpaint. With the proceeds of my next novel, I shall have it painted."

—Henry James

Before achieving his own fame, a young Sinclair Lewis sold plots and story ideasto Jack London.

Screenwriter Rod Serling was very reluctant to put himself in front of thecamera to host his Twilight Zone TV show. In fact he had to routinely changeshirts during filming because they became saturated with nervous sweat. Histense and terse delivery caught on, however, and he found himself spending moretime on camera than writing. His creative output went further downhill a fewseasons later when he was hired as host—without any creative input—for theabysmal Night Gallery. But at least he mercifully died during open-heart surgerybefore hitting rock bottom: he had been scheduled to begin hosting a 1976comedy-variety show called Keep on Truckin'.

Dr. Pearl Zane Grey, a moderately successful dentist, became more successful bywriting Western novels in between drilling patients (dropping the "Dr." and hisfirst name for his literary works).

No wonder all of his stories were tinged with such paranoia: Franz Kafka was acivil servant who only dabbled with writing in his spare time.

Anthony Trollope worked for the British post office for thirty-three years.During that time he wrote four dozen novels by rising at 5:30 A.M. and writing athousand words before trudging off to work. Within postal circles, however, hisbiggest claim to fame is that he invented the street-corner mailbox.

Another man of letters (literally!) was William Faulkner, who was postmaster ofOxford, Mississippi.

Charles Bukowski and Richard Wright both worked as mail carriers.

Leo Tolstoy found God and gave up writing fiction between 1878 and 1885 in favorof writing about his religious beliefs and society. He also gave up his propertyand sex life, denounced his former writings, and began working in the fieldsdressed as a peasant. Because of his fame as a former novelist, people madepilgrimages from all over the world to visit him and hear his word. The RussianOrthodox Church became so threatened by his ever-increasing spiritual powerthat, in 1901, it excommunicated him.

Horatio Alger wrote 134 rags-to-riches books about plucky poor boys being takenhome and adopted by rich industrialists. His career as a Unitarian minister hadbeen cut short in 1886 when a church committee investigated rumors of his"inordinate and imprudent" attention to the boys of his congregation. Accused ofmolesting two of them, he was allowed to resign his position. It was then thathe began writing full time.

Erle Stanley Gardner, creator of Perry Mason, was himself a lawyer who rootedfor the underdog. He was admitted to the California bar in 1911 and was knownfor defending poor Chinese and Mexican immigrants. In the 1940s, with some ofhis royalties, Gardner set up "The Court of Last Resort," an organization thattook on cases of people who seemed unjustly imprisoned.

Poet Wallace Stevens was an executive in the legal department of the HartfordInsurance Company. An aside he was heard to mutter at one of his few poetryreadings: "If only the boys back in the office could see me now."

Before they became the household names they are today, Cynthia Ozick, DorothySayers, and Joseph Heller all wrote advertising copy.

Kurt Vonnegut wrote press releases for General Electric.

Amy Tan wrote horoscopes.

Before her literary career took off, Rita Mae Brown wrote screenplays, mostnotably for Roger Corman's schlock slasher film Slumber Party Massacre in 1982.

Henry David Thoreau was a pencil maker.

"O. Henry" (William Sydney Porter) began writing short stories while working asa bank teller. Unfortunately, he was convicted of embezzlement and was sentencedto five years in the federal penitentiary in Columbus, Ohio. His crime hadattracted some notoriety, so he didn't want to use his real name for hiswriting....