You want to turn your passion into a profession?
On going pro, and what it means to write “for yourself”
A lot of comments pop up around different forums on Substack in which writers ask how best to transition from a part-time amateur to a full-time professional. Well-meaning writers offer advice—usually more successful writers trying to dissuade novices from going pro. I can’t offer any insight in that regard, as I’m not a paid writer on Substack, successful or otherwise. What I can do is offer something maybe more valuable: A different question. Instead of asking “how to?” writers might want to begin by asking “at what cost?” Writers likely understand the potential financial risks involved in the transition from amateur to professional, but does everyone consider the long-term creative and emotional risks?
I don’t want to rain on anyone’s parade, and I’m not here to discourage anyone who truly wants to take the plunge. Some writers will never be dissuaded no matter how many caveats come your way, and for some going pro might well pay off. I’m not a professional writer (not on Substack, anyway) and I’m not trying to dissuade anyone from becoming a professional writer. If you’ve got the means and this is a viable path for you, go for it. I do think a lot of established writers try to preserve the mystique around what they do by pulling up the drawbridge behind them. This is shitty and kind of snobbish. Besides, plenty of people take up writing as a profession simply because they have a marketable skill and there’s little heavy lifting involved. Writing isn’t a secret society and it shouldn’t be exclusive to an elect cohort with the right opinions and connections. If you can muster the audience to pay your bills, and your style/subject matter is such that you’re sure they’ll stick around long enough to justify quitting your day job, have at it.
But what I do want to share is my experience with trying to turn my passion into a career, and what it could mean for your relationship with writing.
For me, it wasn’t writing, but riding. I grew up around horses and dreamt my whole life about being a professional horse trainer and competitor. I was pretty good, too, if I may say so. I won some prestigious awards, trained some challenging horses, worked my way up from grooming and mucking stalls through catch-riding and teaching to starting horses for a top importer. I’d managed at a breeding stable. I trained with some of the best riders in the US and Europe. I never had the financial resources for the big leagues, but I put in my time learning the ropes and I knew horses inside and out. When I felt I’d learned enough and had a solid reputation as someone knowledgeable, capable, and qualified to manage, train, and teach horsemanship, I was ready to open my own business (many in the biz succeeded on far less). I was excited to finally be doing the thing I loved most in the world. I couldn’t believe how lucky I was that I got to do this for a living! I knew it would be hard work, but I was hungry for it. My barn began to fill up.
But that excitement soon waned when I had a rider come to try a gentle, kind young horse I had been training to sell. The rider was rough, impatient, and clearly not experienced enough to complete the horse’s training. It was a poor match. But she wanted the horse. And I had rent, feed, and vet bills to pay. What was I supposed to do?
I didn’t sell the horse to that rider. But that was a poor business choice that set me back financially. More hard choices like that would follow.
Instead of asking “how to?” writers might want to begin by asking “at what cost?”
My entire professional life became nothing but of series of these choices: compromise my values and methods or starve. Do the soulless things I most despise about the industry or lose my business. Join, or fail. And I began to hate my job because I was struggling to do it right—to do it on my terms.
Lots of up-and-coming trainers I encountered had no ethical dilemmas selling horses to abusive homes or using unethical tricks to ensure their clients won ribbons. And there are writers who are more than happy to engineer articles, essays, and stories in whatever form gets the most clicks, regardless of their personal preferences or beliefs. Maybe whatever you’re writing already suits the market to a T and if that’s the case, you’re home free. But, if you’re the sort of person whose “product”—whether literature or horsemanship—goes against the grain in some way, you’ll be faced with the choice: compromise or lose out. I eventually left the industry. Now I’m back to keeping horses for pleasure.
So, the question is: how hungry are you for the title of “full-time author”? Because most of us can still write enough to satisfy the bug in our free time. And we can do it unencumbered by the stresses of chasing paid audiences down the rabbit hole of fickle preference.
I’m happy with my amateur status. Very few of us can write to satisfy an audience “as ourselves” forever without descending into self-parody. I’d go so far as to say no one can. We all evolve. At some point, we all grow tired of our old selves and long to change something or shake things up. Once we typecast ourselves in any role, we’re limited by the audience willing to show up and buy a ticket, so to speak. Some may be lucky enough to keep a loyal readership through various incarnations, controversies, experiments. But that’s a bold gamble to make with a paycheck.
most of us can still write enough to satisfy the bug in our free time
I don’t love writing, but I find a weird satisfaction in it, like the kind I find when doing a jigsaw puzzle. It’s a frustrating process of search and discovery, of wrong turns, of revelations. It’s how I work out my ideas and explore and share my interests. Most of all, assembling that puzzle is how I learn. If people like the picture I make at the end, that pleases me immensely. If they don’t, that’s fine too. But the painstaking process of solving the puzzle is why I’m here. As it stands, I do that best without a ticking clock or undue pressure to perform. Assembling that jigsaw puzzle every day in order to pay the bills would not enrich the practice, but poison it. It would not increase the satisfaction, but the frustration.
Not having to tailor my puzzles or processes to satisfy the preferences of any audience or to keep the lights on at home is an amazing, freeing feeling. When I say I write for myself, that is what I mean. I write what I want, when I want, because I want to, not because I need to. Of course I want to share my work, and of course I want it to be understood. I read and write to get a handle on the world, and hopefully there are others out there doing the same. In the space where writers and readers meet, we triangulate our image of life, and refine our thinking together. That’s why I’m here. To learn, grow, explore, and have some fun. Too many writers get hung up on wanting “writer” as their core identity, and allow themselves to feel inadequate if they’re not doing it professionally. I say, who cares? Let’s face it: being a writer has never been about making a good living, but making a good life. Material gain and prestige will often be elusive, especially in this field, but the other joys are always within our reach.
What a great post. Pick the things that fill our buckets and do them authentically - that's my mantra too. I'm just writing stuff that I like and hopefully other people will too. If not, no big deal because my life doesn't depend on it and that's a good thing! 🤪
I think it's important to make a distinction between writing for an audience and writing for the market. We write to communicate, so we have to think about the audience and how they will receive what we write. A communication not received is not communicated. But writing for an audience is writing about something that matters to us, something we desperately want to communicate with other people, if only to satisfy ourselves that what we have seen and felt the need to say is actually true and actually matters. You don't need to reach a lot of people for that, but you need to plan of reaching someone.
Writing for the market, on the other hand, isn't about what you want to say but about what the market wants to hear. And what the market wants to hear is not some new thing that it might have to think about, but an affirmation of something it already believes -- often something that isn't true, since is is lies that require constant reaffirmation to sustain them.