Making money as a writer, the comparison trap, and our divine calling
Yes Yes Advice Column
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Welcome to Yes Yes - my advice column tucked into the Monday Monday newsletter. The light comes in through the leaf fallen trees and the sunrise fills my house with light as I write to you today.
As writers, artists, and people in the world it is so easy to compare our work to the work of others. Especially in times of fast paced media consumption, social media, and a culture of self improvement.
With the rise of the newsletter model and more writers putting their work out into the world via self publishing, the feeling of compare and despair can do more than freeze a writer in their tracks, it can completely obliterate their desire for creation.
It is my hope that there are more writers, not less. More truth telling, more storytelling, more personal narrative, more fantasy, more fiction, more mystery, more devotion to the edges.
I am not a therapist and I have no training in advice giving. I do not identify as an activist or an organizer. I am an artist, a writer, and a teacher of creative practice with a devotion to how we live. These are my opinions, my best shot at hope, and what I know from 35 years on the planet. As always, may you hold a gentle spirit while reading, take what you like, and leave the rest. Let’s dive in!
Dear Mar, I'm a writer and I can't stop comparing myself to other writers. It's not even about the writing itself anymore - in the last few years, mainly through therapy, I've learned to trust myself and my writing more and more. I know I'm good at it. But when it comes to money and attention, to prizes, grants and sales figures, to making a living from it, I still feel like a loser. I make okay-ish money, but not so good that I don't have to worry about money, and that in turn often takes up so much space in my head that there's too little left over for writing (I also do minor side jobs, so it doesn't just come through the writing itself). I get so envious when I see other authors being showered with such large sums of money and thus being able to focus only on their next book for two, three, four years. I try to accept that (the facts and the envy), but it's so hard for me. Do you have any advice? TYSM!
Dearest beloved writer,
First of all, what a gift to call yourself a writer. I often return to one of my favorite lines from the Joan Didion essay Why I Write where she says :
“It took me some years to discover what I was. Which was a writer. By which I mean not a “good” writer or a “bad” writer but simply a writer, a person whose most absorbed and passionate hours are spent arranging words on paper.”
It feels like the trees whisper : Do we really need more writers? Is the market over saturated? Does everyone and their cousin have a Substack or a newsletter? Isn’t everyone self publishing books or getting book deals? Is there actually any point to all of this? Better yet - can I really ever make money being a writer?