Ever since I was little, I knew I wanted to be a writer. Not only a writer but a fiction writer. The idea of being an author had me captivated, and no matter how much I considered other options, nothing else had the same appeal that writing did.
This desire to create still hasn’t left me. It has, however, morphed into something I hold fear about. In the current digital age, I see artists’ work constantly devalued and treated the same way we treat fast fashion (although let’s not forget that fashion itself is an art form). Art, especially pieces that are published or released on digital platforms, gets reduced to be called merely “content.” The artists themselves? Content creators. How can I write, let alone make anything resembling a living off of it, without forcing myself to become part of the cycle of being viewed simply as content to consume?
After graduation, I fully intend on attempting to pursue a career in fiction writing, even if it means that it may not pay the bills. While it would be phenomenal if I ever got a book deal or made it famous, that isn’t the point of everything for me. I am well aware that most writers don’t get rich or famous off of their art, and I’m okay with that. What I do to pay the bills isn’t what concerns me, whether that’s a desk job or a food service job. (I’m a server currently, and I genuinely enjoy my job despite all the ways that serving tables in a restaurant is looked down on.) I’m way more focused on what I can do to share my writing with others, as well as figuring out how to be compensated for the pieces that I create. I hope that the portfolio I make in this class can serve as a showcase of the pieces that I’m most proud of and as a way for others to glimpse into how I experience the world.
At this point, I know how to write, and, despite what my internal critic is telling me, my writing is pretty good. I also know of at least a small handful of journals that will pay me for my writing at rates that are considered semi-professional or professional for the genre. I also have an abundance of writing that I can edit and polish up for submission to various journals.
There are still several steps that I need to reach some of my writing goals. While the prompt for this blog post says “career-related job,” I’m going to treat it more as a “first-time getting paid professionally for writing” situation since you typically already have to be established as a writer for any sort of book deal. One of the first things I need to do is start to work on editing and revising pieces that I’d like to submit, as well as generate some sort of portfolio to publish works I want to have available for free (such as pieces I have the right to publish again and pieces that are unavailable to being submitted to other literary journals for whatever reason). I would also like to work out a consistent writing schedule, as well as set up some way for me to get paid by readers if they’d like to give a tip.
I know that my ambitions here are small-scale, but admittedly, I’m not looking to make it big right away. I’ve grown to temper my expectations for this field, and that has been extremely beneficial. I simply want to share my art with the world and hopefully get paid for it.