Despite the atypical nature of my chosen career path, I have never once received career advice from one of my creative writing professors. We’ve never had a dedicated class or two where we would just sit down and talk about what it would be like to be a writer trying to make a living off of the art we so desperately want to make. This past week was the first time we’ve ever broached the topic; my professor had assigned a foreword from the latest edition of the Best American Short Stories where the guest editor, Min Jin Lee, relates her experiences and shares numbers on what it’s like to be a writer. As I mentioned last week, I am fully prepared for the reality that I am not going to be able to support myself with my writing alone. This worrying tendency to avoid talking about the logistics of making money off of our art has left me groping in the dark.
To begin researching my writing opportunities, I first had to come to two conclusions:
- The type of job I’m looking for isn’t going to be available to me on a website like LinkedIn, Glassdoor, or any other website hosting job listings. As amazing as it would be, writing is not a career that would pay me hourly.
- I need to do my searching based on what genres I write for. I can’t go to a magazine meant for horror and hand them my random AO3, enemies-to-lovers coffeeshop AU fanfic with the serial number filed off. I need to find genre-appropriate places to get paid.
Keeping these things in mind, I, unfortunately, went to Google to start plugging in search terms. I ended up getting fruitful results from ‘speculative fiction magazines,’ getting back several websites that compiled lists of publishers that accept speculative fiction (which is a rather broad genre and encapsulates everything I enjoy writing). The two best lists I found were from the International Writer’s Collective and Freedom With Writing. While I was initially drawn to both websites from looking at their speculative fiction listings, I found much more to these resources. Both websites provide extensive lists of publications across several different genres. IWC tends to be good at providing information about how long each publication wants pieces to be, how long the response time is after submissions close, and if there are any submission fees to be aware of. FWW also includes length requirements and is better at providing information about the pay rate for each publication. There are probably hundreds of opportunities packed into these two websites, although not every opportunity is going to be where I submit my work.
The biggest qualification for any publication is that I know how to write, and how to do it well. This means that I must be able to create and that I must be able to both edit my work and take feedback on issues my writing has without it feeling like a personal attack. Another skill I need to learn is how to format my work using the Shunn Manuscript Format. While manuscript formatting may vary between publishers, the Shunn formatting generally seems to be the standard. I also need to have a basic understanding of how to submit my work to whatever submission portal each publisher uses. This can vary as well, with different publishers opting for email submissions instead. This isn’t a skill I can necessarily sit down and learn, but rather I must try to adapt and learn each portal as I come across it. Thankfully, growing up in the digital age has been a great way to prepare me to learn new programs quickly.
Thankfully, I have been published before. One of my pieces of fiction was published in the Underground, GSU’s undergraduate literary magazine. Rights reverted to me immediately after the issue’s publication, so I can post the work in a digital portfolio and acknowledge the prior publication. I believe the fact that I’ve been published once demonstrates the ability to do so again, as well as demonstrates my ability to do what it takes to get published again.
Before I graduate, I have to write more and polish what I already have. I want to select some pieces that I enjoy but don’t necessarily think are publication-worthy and polish those to go up as reading samples. I also want to create a way for casual readers to pay me for my writing. Hopefully, this manifests itself as a Patreon or a Kofi (probably Kofi, since it’s more tip-oriented and not bonus content). I also need to just write, write, and write some more. I hope to submit work to at least two different publications before graduation, and hopefully, one of those two will be paid if my work is accepted.
This exercise has broadened the scope of what opportunities are out there. I had no idea just how many publications were out there, and I had no idea how many of them would pay me for my work. I still have pretty conservative expectations about how much I can get. This is a tough way to earn money and can be rather competitive. I largely want to get serious about the amount of time I put into writing my stories. I want to pursue ideas without a grade being attached. If a piece gets rejected from one publication, it could still get published somewhere else. I’m confident that I can get a “yes” from someone before I graduate, even if it is on a small scale and even if I get a dozen or so “no”s.