I’d planned to write my blog entry about something useful and controversial like serial commas during editing (and if you don’t think that’s controversial, you don’t know many editors! LOL!) But a thread on another writing site I visit changed my mind. You can see from the title here that my new blog topic is also quite controversial, so much so that it’s a sharp knife, stabbing at the psyche of every writer I know—whether published or not. Raise hands, now. How many of you have heard this in your writing life?
“It’s only a hobby. You’re not getting paid (or paid enough,) so writing can’t be your job.”
How many of you have been so incensed by the statement that you want to reach out and strangle/slap/kick the person? After all, nobody would walk up to someone working a minimum wage job and say that. It’s tactless and thoughtless and insulting. Heck, I know career burger flippers and waitresses who struggle with their salary, but LOVE their job and never would want something different. And even some multi-published full-time authors don’t make much more over the course of a year than a fast food/discount store position. Plus, let’s not talk about how much more tax we pay as self-employed people, rather than W-2 employees, or the lack of health insurance.
I think one of the big problems is that people look from the outside and only see that “product + money = career” while “product - money = hobby. But if the writer identifies with BEING a writer, then that’s their career. It’s an internal thing that can’t be judged from the outside . . . and SHOULDN’T be judged from the outside. I see articles and posts and blogs from writers who have never wanted more than to write. It’s their calling. It screams in their soul—struggling every day to get out. How can a life’s calling, one that you’ve trained for and practiced, NOT be considered a career? That is one of the Webster’s/Oxford definitions, after all. “A profession for which one trains and which is undertaken as a permanent calling.”
But what about the hobbists? Are they somehow less of a writer because it’s not—in their own mind—a career? Should they give up publishing because it’ll never be their “career?” This is an important question to me because I’m one of those hobbists. I identify with being a paralegal, even though that’s not where my money is coming from presently. So, to me, writing IS my hobby. It’s just a well-paying one with lots of benefits. But in my heart and brain, I’m still a paralegal who’s taking a break from the day-to-day business of it. I still keep up my certifications, though, and read equally as much new case law as fiction. Part of me desperately misses pursuing my career, even though my present job is paying well and has the potential to pay REALLY well.
In my mind, my attitude toward writing takes nothing away from someone who considers writing their career but doesn’t make money, whether “presently” or “ever.”
Yet, in some writing circles I dare not state my personal feelings on the subject. Even my co-author, when I said writing was my hobby (albeit a well-paying one) said never to speak that out loud again. If she ever began to consider writing a “hobby” she might as well stop and never pen another word for the rest of her life. The thought of it made her sick to her stomach. I know she’s truly sincere, but it seems so strange to me. I hear “How dare you!” as often as “Well, that’s your opinion, I suppose,” from various friends and acquaintances in the business, and aspiring authors frequently take special affront at the view—like, why should I have a spot on the bookshelf if it doesn’t scream in my soul? I have no RIGHT to earn the prize when apparently it’s some sort of lark to me. I get nasty rep points and angry emails from those who feel I’m dissing the entire of the writing community by sharing my belief.
But the thing is, I consider a “hobby” just as important—quality wise, as anything I would do in my career. It has no less status in my head. I still seek perfection in each book/story I produce. Does someone who makes fine furniture as a hobby do any less of a job because it’s not the main source of paying the bills? Actually, most of the time, the quality is MORE exacting in a hobby, because you’re living up to your own standards. So, a person with already high standards seeks to constantly improve. It must be perfect, and nothing less will do—no matter how long it takes to produce.
So, I ask all of you who read this: How do YOU think of your writing? Is it hobby or career? Does it matter to you whether someone feels the opposite? Does it stress you out? Let’s hear your views!
