July 8th, 2012 / 9:57 am
Random

“Jobs” you get “paid” for

It strikes me as funny that some commenters responded to my post below – letting people know about an opportunity to edit for the Volta – by questioning what a “job” is.

It strikes me as funny because most of call ourselves “writers”, but we’re not paid for it.

Many of us call ourselves “editors”, but we’re not paid for that either.

For the past few years, I’ve served as an associate editor for Starcherone Books, editor for Tarpaulin Sky, and prose editor for Puerto del Sol. I’m currently guest editing Fairy Tale Review. Blake and I co-edited an anthology. I’m editing an anthology right now with Joshua Marie Wilkenson.

All of it: unpaid.

I’m not complaining about not being paid. I think this is the price of supporting independent publishing.

I didn’t get into editing to be paid. If I got paid, I wouldn’t reject the money, but it’s not necessary.

Maybe it’s not “necessary” because I have a real “job.” I teach. That’s how I make money. That’s my “occupation.” When people ask me what I do, I teach. Look at me: I’m a fucking professor, legit.

But that’s not my primary identifier. If I weren’t self-deprecating, insecure, and neurotic, when people ask what I do, I’d say I write. I’m a novelist. But I’m not paid for it. Sure, yes, I get royalty checks here and there and sometimes I get paid for stories, but it’s paltry, certainly not enough to live on, definitely not enough to warrant any proclamations I might have that it’s my “occupation.”

Did you all get into writing for the money? How about editing? What do you edit and do you get paid for it? And if yes, enough to live on? I know handful of people who do, other than actual editors in New York. I don’t know, maybe commenters are right and I should be demanding money for my editorial gigs. Sentimental me: I just assumed people did all this out of love or some cliché like that.

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63 Comments

  1. Doug

      I don’t think the issue was that the job isn’t paid, but in how it was initially presented. Titling it “Need a fucking job?” implies it would be paid, because ‘jobs’ typically are. This effect is enhanced if, indeed, the reader needs a job. It is further enhanced when the admission that it is not paid does not appear until halfway down the post. Headlines are tricky.

  2. Jake Levine

      I am a professor in Korea and that’s how I rip my skrilla. But the real reason I got into poetry, and in particular editing, was for the fast cars and guns. People are assholes. Generally, writers and aspiring to be writers are assholes. Most of the successful and most talented / legitimate writers I know have their hands in some kind of editing and are facilitating the art they practice. They know and we know that without people who continue to facilitate and make space for art, doing the hard work for free, that we would have to ask the poetry foundation and the gugg and the macarthur to start paying us to do what we do for free. That would be communism and it would be unfair of us to ask for money to make or make space for art by organizations that, for all intensive purposes, are supposed to support the people who are making the art happen. That’s why the well endowed are so well endowed and we are so emasculated…. gender neutral… cyborg robot zombies from planet zebra 6.

  3. June Ward

      Seems like in literature, especially small/independent presses/magazines/whatever, people are really into the idea of working on producing or editing things and not getting paid for it–which is totally fine and cool, but I don’t get this holier-than-thou attitude about it that is pretty ridiculous, considering how self-serving it usually is, especially compared to other volunteer work people do–building homes, medical volunteering, environmental work, public/neighborhood art, animal activism. In no other field–not even other arts fields–is unpaid working considered a “job.” The definition of a job is something you do for money. Get over yourself.

  4. Trey

      person who is a homeowner: “the roof of my house is leaking very badly, I need to fix it”

      friend of person who is a homeowner: “that is a big job for one person”

      person on street: “how dare you it is not a job that person is not getting paid for it get out of my sight you buffoons”

  5. Trey

      woman who has a child and is fond of cliched sayings: “being a mother is a full-time job”

      person on street: “you horrible person how can you call that a job you are not getting paid for it and that means it is not a job it is a pastime at best I hope you’re proud of yourself I wish you were dead”

  6. Rick Rofihe

      As a writer, of course I’m interested in money, but, as an
      experiment, I decided to put nine short stories of mine, each of which
      originally appeared in The New Yorker magazine, together as a “book”,
      under the title “BOYS who DO the BOP”, and make it easily and freely
      downloadable in e-form at http://www.anderbo.com/bop9.html — anyone, anywhere, anytime, can read it on a computer or smartphone without charge. Yes,
      there was a time when I was paid $2500+ by The New Yorker for my
      fictions, but, as an editor there at the time, Dan Menaker, said to me,
      “You can’t expect to make a living from short stories.” This, I think,
      is increasingly true, both for writers and for publishers. Lately, I’ve
      been giving my — and others’ — stories, poems and nonfiction away for no
      charge via the online journal I co-founded in 2005 at
      http://www.anderbo.com/ yet at the same time I strongly disapprove of
      making writers pay fees to submit their writings, unless it’s for a contest
      where the money would go toward paying the winners cash prizes. As for
      the Anderbo editorial staff, it’s basically an unpaid one, and all work
      is voluntary; also, we aren’t in a position to pay the writers, the only
      exception is work having to do with our literary contests —
      contest-entry readers, contest assistants, contest judges, and, of
      course, the contest-winners, are paid.

  7. Mike James

      This guy Rick always drops through at random times to drop some real talk on ya’ll bitch asses.

  8. Anonymous

      I feel bad for this person on the street. They’re sure subjected to a lot of insipid conversation.

  9. shaun gannon

      my ass is not a bitch :(

  10. Trey

      do not pity the person on the street, for the person on the street can go wherever he or she wants to, yet the person on the street *chooses* to approach people having insipid conversations.

  11. A D Jameson

      Being a mother (or a parent in general) should be recognized by the government as an actual job, and one that’s vital to society; those who do it should get paid by the government, and receive social benefits as well as free career training later when the children grow up.

      My mother was a full-time mother and she did a pretty awesome job, and society has benefited from her having done that. (My sister and I turned out well and work etc.) But society, for some bizarre reason, made it very hard for her to do that, and for other parents to parent full-time.

      After my sister and I grew up, my mom had no direct income of her own, no social benefits, and found it nearly impossible to reenter the workforce. That’s a shameful and ridiculous way to treat people.

  12. A D Jameson

      Lily, I love you dearly, and I think confusion also arose from your choice of words “need” and “fucking.” “Fucking” implies desperation, as in “I’m willing to take this fucking job because I don’t have any food.” “Need” reinforces that impression. No one “needs” a volunteer editorial position; rather, it is the position that needs volunteers.

      xxoxxo
      A

  13. lily hoang

      Agreed, both of you. I was being cheeky with the title of the post. My error, but still, I think I had some point somewhere in here. Idk, I’m delirious.

  14. Anonymous

      smells a little alice hoffman round here

  15. Michael J Seidlinger

      I have made enough money off my writing to be able to go into a bar and use royalties to get moderately buzzed this one time. I think that one time is enough though. It certainly would be cool to be making a living off editing/writing but, really, I’ll be doing what I’m doing right now with or without the occasional self-confidence boost of a royalty check every couple months/half-year. If I didn’t need to eat, sleep, or pay for gas/health insurance I’d get rid of all that too so I could write more, edit more, dream more, read more… more, more, more. There’s always “more” and in some sense it is a method of payment; there’s always more to be added to the page.

  16. A D Jameson

      People still overreacted, imo, fwiw. We’re all here to support one another, are we not?

      People, quick to pounce.

  17. lily hoang

      It’s ok, Adam, thank you for yr support tho. This is what the Internet does, I got me some leathery skin.

  18. A D Jameson

      Oh my god! How the fuck do you dare yuo say that to me?!!

  19. A D Jameson

      Oh, wait, sorry; misread your comment. Apologies.

  20. June Ward

      Homeowner also did not post on HTMLGiant about a new “job opening” for _someone besides homeowner_ to  roof his house for him.

      There’s a big difference between a “job” and a, you know, handjob– if you do it yourself, no $$ is needed

  21. June Ward

      Homeowner also did not post on HTMLGiant about a new “job opening” for _someone besides homeowner_ to  roof his house for him.

      There’s a big difference between a “job” and a, you know, handjob– if you do it yourself, no $$ is needed

  22. Nick Mamatas

      It’s possible to do something for love and still get paid for it.  And there’s no reason not to get paid for even part-time endeavors. I doubt, Lily, that your anthology with Blake requires forty hours a week, nor will it be so popular that you’ll be paid a full-time wage for it just from pure market glee, but “getting paid” and “getting paid a full-time wage” and “getting paid according to the lifestyle standards of the artistic bourgeoisie” are three different things. if one’s efforts and time and writing are worth anything, well, then they are worth something.

      I almost always get paid to write. Sometimes it’s a little, sometimes it’s a few bucks more than a little. My two most recent checks were $500 from NEW HAVEN REVIEW and $50 for a piece in an anthology in the form of a fictional auction catalog called THE STARRY WISDOM LIBRARY: http://starrywisdomlibrary.com/. I’d certainly recommend NHR be on the submission lists of everyone here, as it’s a quality journal that pays, looks good on a CV, and is open to formal experiments.

      But I’m not on the academic track—there’s no particular reason that creative writing (and editing) should be unpaid except that it follows an academic model: publications are to increase the length of one’s CV, which is supposed to impress hiring and tenure committees. Competition for faculty positions has led to an explosion of journals and magazines unread by anyone save would-be submitters—who often also start their own journals or magazines—and occasionally members of those committees. Of course there’s no money in that. But the academic track is not the only track. Also, there’s no particular reason for the academic track to work this way except for desperation, history, and the fact that 99.999999% of everyone who starts a journal or magazine in that track has no idea how to make money from it, so spends no time contemplating the possibility, and then decides that it must impossible. This is what happens when you have a writer-centered (i.e., publish my friends!) versus reader-centered (i.e., publish my friends and hope that strangers read them!) conception of publishing.

      Currently I help edit THE BIG CLICK (www.bigclickmag.com) and have made no money from it yet. The writers I’ve published do—not a lot, but of course I pay them $100 per short story, which I consider minimal. If it’s a hobby, it’s a hobby that I put money into, like one would fly-fishing or model trains or horseback riding or scrapbooking. If I can turn the hobby into a side line, I will. My day job is in publishing (haikasoru.com) and pays well. I’ve also edited anthologies for big publishers (HAUNTED LEGENDS, in which you had a story you were paid for Lily) and small (SPICY SLIPSTREAM STORIES—in another 50 years the royalties might pay me back for the stories I purchased).

      One might say this is the difference between “popular” fiction and “experimental” or “academic” fiction, but it’s not like my own shit is especially popular, and it’s not like the big names who are splashed around the ads for AWP every year are collecting freebie credits from their best college pal’s webzine.

      Starting an online magazine is easy enough I have to say that I’m utterly unsure why anyone who would want to be a part of one would volunteer to be someone else’s lackey rather than just starting their on and enjoying all the dubious perks of authority and responsibility. I suppose I’d also point would-be anthologists to Kickstarter and the like, which serves the dual simultaneous purpose of fund-raising and audience generation. That could probably help small publishers/editors pay their writers and themselves.

  23. Richard Grayson
  24. Richard Grayson

       Nobody’s been able to make a living writing short stories since the 1920s and maybe 1930s, when short stories actually paid more than novels (see Fitzgerald, F. Scott, et al.).

  25. Mike James

      I survive on less than 100 dollars a week. That is not a joke.

  26. Anonymous

      Yes, creative writers who happen to be on the “academic track” merely publish to pad their CVs. They masquerade as writers (because that’s easy to do, right?) in order to compete with hundreds of other applicants for an assistant professor position that pays 50K a year in a flyover state. It’s such an easy and worthwhile scam! Instead of majoring in a marketable field and making 60-75K by the age of 28, spend several years in grad school as a TA and a few more as an adjunct, all while placing stories in magazines with a .0001 acceptance rate so you can compete with 200 other people for a post at Mid-East State U! Such elitist academics who are in it for the rewards, not the writing life! You’re onto them, Nick Mamatas! 

  27. tyler lebens

      can anyone point the way to Happy Dog Mom?

  28. Frank Tas, the Raptor

      I got into writing because I like it/am good at it, and for a period of time I was interested in making money off it, but that feeling of entitlement’s waned over time, and I can’t help but think one of the reasons my interest has waned is thanks to the cynical attitude of writers who propagate this idea of making money off writing is this impossible thing. Does that make sense? 

      You know, there are so many ways to skin this cat, and if you skin this cat in a way that only impresses the artiste you’re not likely gonna make money, and if you skin the cat in a way that appeals only to professors you’ll make money but not really off your writing but more off a university’s kind graces, and if you skin a cat in a way that is simply something you want your friends to like without much interest in any other audience, well, duh, you’re not gonna make money, but who cares about money in that case?

      I mean, I know I’m not much interested in the artiste, and I know I’m not much interested in the professors (aside from assigning book in course [up them sales, baby!]), and I know my friends like my work but I have a lot of different kinds of friends, but the one thing, I mean, the one thing it seems all of these people have in common, a thing they can agree on, is something like TELEVISION PROGRAM Louie, and fuck, someone has to write that! Louis CK WRITES the scripts for that, and the episodes follow like short stories! Did you see the Eddie episode?! That is a wonderful short story put on screen!

      And what I’m starting to think is, fuck, writers talk about how hard it is to make money off of writing, but I don’t think that’s true if you go into writing trying to impress everyone instead of trying to impress one camp! The purpose of different camps is sanctuary, not success! So maybe write a short story and then find a friend with a camera and make it into a movie, or expose an audience to more universally palatable work that’ll ease them into more unique/controversial work… I dunno. I feel like by pigeon holing writing as a singular craft instead of seeing it as the essential basis of all entertainment (aside from music, I guess), it’s easier to shrug out shoulders and not expect money.

  29. Anonymous

      the relative valuelessness of writing, and the arts in general, is a pretty popular idea among many writers/artists. it’s interesting that this valuation pretty closely mirrors that of most governments, school boards, and other governing bodies in the U.S. i think we might need to give up the fight for arts funding for children if, after they attend symphonies and are able to afford crayons in the classroom and have authors visit their schools, they grow up to have their artistic peers tell them it was–relatively speaking–mostly a waste of their time. 

  30. leapsloth14

      (not reading earlier comments so sorry if irrelevant. I’ll read them later over brandy.)

      I think writers ‘make’ a lot of money not making money. If you actually want to make money (go right ahead–I’ve never had the gene to) you can judge contest, review books, win contests, appear at readings–all for money! Ask Blake Butler. He ‘owns’ the url to this site, right? Has he made money reading, other extraneous events not writing? Yes. So have many, many others. There’s a whole world of money in that side of writing. I’m not going to name this Cw prof but I once ate lunch with a CW prof and he said “I make 2X my salary doing readings…” OK. I mean there is this CW money world out there, if you want to go. Not many people realize this, I think. The whole CW thing is a ridiculous (my opinion) industry. So. When students ask me how to get paid, I say write for free. That’s the point of this rambling post (Sorry, I’m on rum). Write well for free. Then people will come pay you. Build it and they will come. The internet actually allows writers to build it. Before, not so much.

  31. Nick Mamatas

      I’m pretty sure the real Breece D’J Pancake (RIP) could tell the difference between writing and publishing. Indeed, nobody writes to get a gig teaching frosh comp to all those terrible horrible people who go to state schools (shock!) away from the coasts (horror!), but people do *publish* in order just to do that. If you think “publish or perish” magically doesn’t operate in academic creative writing, there’s really nothing else left to say other than that you are wrong. Of course publish or perish operates in CW, just as it does in the rest of the academy. And in the same way few kids say, “When I grow up, I’m going to publish a short story in the East Hackensack Review and get two copies as payment, and then do a novel with my friend’s press and sell 200 copies!” no kid says “When I grow up, I’m going to spend five years writing a dissertation on the child-naming practices of low-SES parents in Northern California, so I can get a job teaching Durkheim and Marx to teenagers who just want to work for Microsoft.” And yet, the world is full of people who do just those things. We’re almost all mediocrities, we all fall short of our ambitions and settle for something less, by definition.

      As an aside, “marketable fields” aren’t as marketable these days as you might think, being a writer—as opposed to a professor of either literature or writing—doesn’t require having been a literature or creative writing major, and there are plenty of ways to make money or enter “the writing life” without a degree at all. (Wanna code: get devtools and start playing around. If you’re any good, you’ll get a decent job somewhere, even with only a high school diploma. Wanna write: the same thing is true. Get a library card and a cheap computer with a word processing program.)

      By the way, desktop publishing in the 1980s led to its own explosion of lit journals, but the actual motivation for most of them was to publish one’s friends. The motivation to publish in most of them certainly wasn’t to be read, as the circulation of these journals was incredibly low, but to…go on, guess, have a publication credit. These days, there’s no reason at all to publish with an online zine if one wants to be read. Just Get Popular on Twitter and put the stories up on your own Tumblr. Indeed, the Internet has made it so easy to publish that one need not publish with anyone other than one’s own self. Non-self-publication is a form of credential, dubious as it is, and has little to do with why one writes.

  32. Anonymous

      “I’m pretty sure the real Breece D’J Pancake (RIP) could tell the difference between writing and publishing.”–Nick M

      I am pretty sure the two overlap quite often. 

      “Indeed, nobody writes to get a gig teaching frosh comp to all those terrible horrible people who go to state schools (shock!) away from the coasts (horror!), but people do *publish* in order just to do that.”–Nick M

      No they don’t. Your use of “just” is hyperbolic nonsense. I’m sure it’s possible for a writer to want to publish because he’s a writer while also considering how publication impacts his academic job prospects. The two aren’t mutually exclusiv.

      “If you think “publish or perish” magically doesn’t operate in academic creative writing, there’s really nothing else left to say other than that you are wrong….Of course publish or perish operates in CW, just as it does in the rest of the academy.”–Nick M

      Um, of course it does–your point? Why shouldn’t it operate when there are more qualified people than spots and professors who teach should also “do”? Again, your point? How does this prove that writers publish “just” land tenure or a job?

      “As an aside, “marketable fields” aren’t as marketable these days as you might think, being a writer—as opposed to a professor of either literature or writing—doesn’t require having been a literature or creative writing major, and there are plenty of ways to make money or enter “the writing life” without a degree at all. (Wanna code: get devtools and start playing around. If you’re any good, you’ll get a decent job somewhere, even with only a high school diploma. Wanna write: the same thing is true. Get a library card and a cheap computer with a word processing program.)”

      Awesome. You seem uber-defensive and somewhat bitter, like you need to argue for your chosen path’s right to exist. I think it’s great that writers can make a living in multiple ways. 
      “By the way, desktop publishing in the 1980s led to its own explosion of lit journals, but the actual motivation for most of them was to publish one’s friends.”Can you prove this accusation that major literary journals were started in the 80s with the sole purpose to publish one’s friends? Care to provide some examples? “The motivation to publish in most of them certainly wasn’t to be read, as the circulation of these journals was incredibly low, but to…go on, guess, have a publication credit. These days, there’s no reason at all to publish with an online zine if one wants to be read. Just Get Popular on Twitter and put the stories up on your own Tumblr. Indeed, the Internet has made it so easy to publish that one need not publish with anyone other than one’s own self. Non-self-publication is a form of credential, dubious as it is, and has little to do with why one writes.I don’t know many “academic writers” who are landing tenure off zine publications. I also don’t know many academic writers who value quantity over quality; everyone knows that three excellent credits will defeat ten weak ones any day of the week. You seem to be slaying all sorts of dragons in your posts.  

  33. ZZZZZIPPP

       MIKE IF YOU MADE A BOOK ABOUT THAT ZZZZIPP WOULD READ IT AND MAYBE REVIEW IT FAVOURABLY ON AMAZON HOW CAN YOU DO THAT IF YOU AREN’T A PHOTON MAYBE WAIT ARE YOU A PHOTON OF SOME KIND

  34. ZZZZZIPPP

       I MEAN WHOSE BASEMENT DO YOU LIVE IN AND IS THERE ROOM IN THERE OR DID YOU BUILD A HOUSE AND IS THERE ROOM IN THERE OR DO YOU HAVE A RICH FANTASYLAND YOU LIVE IN AND I GUESS WHAT I’M SAYING IS IS THERE ROOM IN THERE

  35. JAGABOND

      Looking for someone to pay for my writing… pst me.

  36. shaun gannon

      yeah, the one time i got paid enough to get drunk in the city once told me that if i just get that every once in a while, i’m pretty happy with where i am.

  37. Nick Mamatas

      “Breece”, the first sentence of my response to Lily, who was asking about writing and editing and whether we did it for the love or some shit was “It’s possible to do something for love and still get paid for it.” The “something” there is writing (and editing), not publishing. Writing and publishing overlap, but you simply swapped out one (writing) for the other (publishing) and then began ranting about all the poor oppressed MFA students and people looking for tenure track jobs. Boo to the hoo; those are hardly preconditions for “the writing life.”

       Why do folks on the academic track publish in journals that nobody reads, for zero pay, if not for the prestige in the field? Remember, “the writing life” isn’t an answer, because it’s easier to participate in that without submitting to the unread/non-paying journals—Tumblr is part of the writing life too, and can even lead to book deals. “Because he’s a writer”, as you have it above, says nothing about necessarily publishing in any *particular* journals. “Because he’s a writer” explains submissions and even self-publication in general (writers want to be read, one presumes) but not submissions to the journals with no payment for writers and puny circulations.

      **Again, your point? How does this prove that writers publish “just” to land tenure or a job?**

      My point, which is actually blindingly obvious, is that there are plenty of paying venues for writing, even in the independent press.  However, those paying venues tend to be more competitive. Do you really think the average quarterly Fill In The Blank Review or fiction website has a .0001 acceptance rate? That’s delusional. So if one wants to get tenure, where does one generally submit? It is not a sheer coincidence that academic literary journals happen to match the model of journals in other scholarly fields—where publication is a requirement, publication pay non-existent or even negative (pay to submit/publish), and readership limited to other scholars—while also having almost nothing in common with popular magazines, niche publications with a non-submitting readership, or even underground fanzines. It’s a *culture.* Again, you just swapped out publishing in non-paying/no-audience journals with publishing in general. There are plenty of reasons to publish in general: what reasons are there to publish in a place that pays everyone *but* the writer and that has an audience of submitters only?

      As far as the founding of lit journals, why not just go ask some of their founders? You’ll generally get the same sort of thing: we didn’t see anyone publishing the stuff we and our friends were writing, and were bored with the other journals. The excellent ones ended up getting university backing (or, occasionally, dead grandma backing.)

      And indeed, quality does beat quantity, but as you know there are many more writers than there are slots available in, say, THE PARIS REVIEW. So, everyone moves down one tier. And the one further down, and one further, etc.

  38. Frank Tas, the Raptor

      Competitive?

      How many 225 lb bench presses does a writer have to do to get a chance of being drafted to these more exclusive journals? What time on the 40 yd dash does he or she need to run, minimum? What kind of stats does the writer need to put up in their college career?

      Are the people who run these presses members of MENSA? Or for God’s sake, what did they score on their SATs? If it’s below 1400 then that is just PATHETIC. And what school? I mean only retards go to state schools, right? I only want to prove myself to Duke grads or higher.

      Like I remember when I got to the divisionals of my creative writing tournament in high school my coach told me over and over not to be afraid to “Use curse words” and “Resort to sexual deviance” for ways to capture my audience’s attention, and, I mean, I did qualify for the nationals that year, so I think I have a good idea of what I’m talking about. That’s why I’m in the entertainment arts media and making less money than any other active worker of the entertainment/arts media. BECAUSE I AM THE BEST COMPETITIVE CREATIVE WRITER AROUND!

  39. Karl Taro Greenfeld

      i make my living from writing books and magazine articles, and have done so for a long time. A few years ago I began publishing in literary journals—sometimes for free, sometimes for small fees. I have found that those paying even a little usually do a better job editing and presenting the stories they are publishing. (There are exceptions, of course.) I think that is because the editor of a journal paying even a few hundred dollars for a story sees that story as having some commercial value, as opposed to artistic value, and so is more careful. (I have been occasionally astonished by how sloppy some well regarded, though non-paying, journals have been with my stories.) We are a capitalist society, and while we may be artists, our work is ultimately judged or valued in capitalist terms. 
      Keep in mind that I am not a teacher and receive no academic credit or tenure standing from publishing stories.

  40. Anonymous

      “Why do folks on the academic track publish in journals that nobody reads, for zero pay, if not for the prestige in the field? ”

      Oh, I don’t know, probably the same reason why folks on the non-academic track (like Rebecca Makkai) publish (and/or seek to publish) in those journals that tend to be the oldest and most established because they have more consistent funding sources.

      Circulation means nothing if you’re work is published alongside crap. I’d rather place a story in the 2,000-3,000 circulated Southern or New England Review than in Writer’s Digest, even if the latter were willing to pay me a $1,000, because most of the work in Writer’s Digest is trash. And I’d say the same thing if I were on the insurance-selling track rather than the academic track. 

  41. lily hoang

      That’s because you’re a badass, Karl Taro Greenfeld. Obv.

  42. lily hoang

      Nick: Yes, I said in my post that I have gotten paid for stories. It’s true. I do. But not enough to live off of. 

      I don’t publish to pad my CV. I don’t write to pad my CV. Teaching is what affords me ability to write. Plus, it’s really fulfilling. I love it. 

      I publish in some very small journals, places with modest readerships, but they’re upstarts, and I like to support that. I also publish in bigger journals and anthologies with circulation. Many of us do. 

      And I’m not complaining about my job, whoever said that in the comment stream. I know I’ve got it cush, but, but I worked very hard to get here. I appreciate people on the academic track, some excellent writing there. I triply appreciate people who have circumnavigated that system, like Karl Taro Greenfeld or Nick Mamatas. Josh Cohen. Etc.  

  43. Michael Seidlinger

      Damn right!

  44. Nick Mamatas

      Breece, the journals that tend to be oldest, most established, and and have funding sources—say, Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, etc.—also tend to have relative higher circulations (one can even occasionally find them in B&N and some newsstands) and pay their authors.  So, your answer to my question is basically, “They don’t; they publish, or try to, in the better journals that do have some readers and do make some payment to their contributors.” Good job, that!

      It’s also funny that you think that Writer’s Digest is a venue for stories; it’s a hobby magazine. That said, perhaps if you were on the writer track and not the insurance-selling or academic track, publishing an article with WD (or The Writer, or Poets & Writers) and getting a check that can cover half a rent check might seem more interesting to you.

  45. Mike James

      It’s a crazy life Zip. Real crazy. Only the strong survive.

  46. Anonymous

      Um, because writers who publish in the Kenyon Review don’t also publish in academic journals a tier down that pay in contributor copies? Markets that don’t pay can’t be prestigious? Okay buddy. 

      And Writer’s Digest is a venue for stories–they publish contest-winning stories, and those contests are advertised all the time. “It’s funny you didn’t know that.” “It’s also funny” you continue to pretend like the “writer track” precludes any consideration of reputation and prestige, that such things are limited to academia.

  47. Karl Taro Greenfeld

      i didn’t circumnavigate the system—which I don’t think is the word you were actually looking for—I didn’t know it existed until I was old as fuck. if I had known the mfa system existed in my 20s, I would have done anything I could to get into it. i was busy writing for magazines and writing speed tribes. i wish I had an mfa. i’m thinking of lying and saying I have one.

  48. Karl Taro Greenfeld

      i didn’t circumnavigate the system—which I don’t think is the word you were actually looking for—I didn’t know it existed until I was old as fuck. if I had known the mfa system existed in my 20s, I would have done anything I could to get into it. i was busy writing for magazines and writing speed tribes. i wish I had an mfa. i’m thinking of lying and saying I have one.

  49. mimi

      hi ZZIPPZZ

  50. marshall mallicoat

       “posted to Stephen Tully Dierks’ Tumblr page and liked by a million fifteen-year-olds”

      sounds good

      those 15 year olds will soon be 18 year olds :)

  51. deadgod

      –and soon enough, if they’re lucky, 78-year-olds.

      I still ‘like’ some things that pierced everydayness for me when I was 15–I remember Dickinson as lightning, The Idea of Order at Key West, Macbeth, juvenile physical science, philosophical obscurities, lots of lasting, deepening entelechies.  (–and plenty of kiddie shit.  What kind of priority would it be to treat ‘youth’ as an accusation?)

      I agree:  if Dierks’s tumblr throws the switch for – how many was that? “a million“?? – okay, a million 15-year-olds, then that’d be very cool.

  52. Melissa Broder

      I thought it was an ad.

  53. Nick Mamatas

      No Breece, I’m sure that they do publish a tier down–when their stories are rejected by Kenyon and they have to place them lower down in order to get that “prestigious” line on their CV. (I like how you now agree with everything I say, but still keep arguing.)

      Further, I never said that prestige was a binary condition—that non-paying meant no prestige. I simply noted that as a tendency prestige, circulation, and payment are positively correlated. If you continue to, stupidly, insist that prestige is somehow this freeloating thing that isn’t related to pay and circulation, of course you’ll end up confused.

      Most WD contests involve the “promotion” of stories; they do publish the occasional “Your Story” in the mag (or more often, on the website) but it’s transparently obvious that in any given issue of WD 95 to 100% of the content is instructional/hobbyist/promotional, not fiction. They spend a lot more space and time promoting their contests than they do actually publishing fiction.

       

  54. spencermadsen

      feel like breece pancake would like pop serial and other outlets that support writers outside of the exclusivity of academia. why are you using his name

  55. Travis Kurowski

      Sorry up front for the length of this quote, but seems relative.

      “I don’t remember having explained to anyone that the Little
      Review couldn’t pay for contributions. It was quite taken for granted that
      since there was no money there would be no talk of renumeration. No one ever
      asked me why I didn’t pay, no one ever made me feel that I was robbing the poor
      artist. It was nine years later in Paris that Gertrude Stein told me I couldn’t
      hope to do such a thing in Europe. Her tone was almost reproachful, although
      she had always offered her manuscripts to the Little Review with the same high
      disregard of payment that characterized all our contributors. She merely didn’t
      consider it good principle. Well, neither do I consider it good principle for
      the artist to remain unpaid—it’s a little better than for him to remain
      unprinted, that’s all. Practically everything the Little Review published
      during its first years was material that would have been accepted by no other
      magazine in the world at the moment. Later all the art magazines wanted to
      print our contributors and, besides, pay them. The contributors took the same
      stand as Sherwood Anderson. If they had something we especially wanted they
      gave it to us before the Dial was permitted to see it—and pay. The best
      European writers and painters did the same. I can’t help feeling that Gertrude
      Stein is wrong. I believe that a little review can exist in any country, at any
      time—not only “before the war.” I believe that an analogous thing exists
      always, somewhere; exists in any epoch of an upheaval in the arts and exists by
      the same dispensations.”

       

      —from My Thirty Years’ War, the first of Margaret Anderson’s
      three-part autobiography

  56. ZZZZZIPPP

      MIMI WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR OTHER COMMENT THAT ZZZZIPP GOT IN HIS E-MAIL HI MIMI

  57. Richard Thomas

      i can’t speak for everyone’s dreams, but i think a lot of writers would like to make a living writing. now what does that mean? well, most likely it’s a combination of things: 

      1. you will publish short stories that pay nothing, pay a few copies, pay .01, .02, .03, .04 and .05 a word, and sometimes get paid a lot more, if you are really good and really lucky. you will get exposure, which can lead to all kinds of things.

      2. you will get paid for your novel(s) and that could be a decent check every quarter, from hundreds to thousands. and if you are prolific enough, maybe you have several books out, that continue to sell every year. 

      3. you will get paid to teach, if that’s what you want to do, and that might be a decent salary, from $40-60k a year. 

      4. you will receive grants (anywhere from $10-10,000+) and payment for speaking/guest lecturing (wide range of possible fees)

      5. and maybe you get paid to edit—a magazine or journal or anthology(ies) which could be a quarterly royalty check as well. 

      BUT what you are tying to do is turn your labor or love into a paying career because it allows you the freedom to do what you love the most: write. it’s tough, but it can be done. it’s what i’m trying to do, but i still work as an art director, and have for seventeen years. but the dream is still alive. and yes, money is a part of that dream, it has to be, if you don’t want your writing to remain a hobby. 

      good luck all.

  58. Dawn West

      Making money off your writing buys you more time to write, so it seems like the natural goal to me, unless it’s just a hobby. I’ve never thought of writing as a hobby, even when I was like eight years old. I talked about being a writer like one of my best friends at the time talked about being a doctor: a desired career. I would make little comics and try to sell them to people in my neighborhood, until the stupid suburb police told me to stop because I had to have a license. I was like but I’m eight and tried to look adorable but they did not care about my adorable sadface and told me to go home.

  59. BreecePancake

      Who said I didn’t “support writers outside of the exclusivity of academia”? Why shouldn’t I use a famous dead writer’s name as a message board handle? 

  60. BreecePancake

      Nowhere did I insist that prestige isn’t the accumulated result of multiple factors; that goes without saying, and I’m not a fan of stating the obvious when engaging in (supposedly) honest conversations. 

      I could easily replace the WD example with others. There are plenty of paying markets that aren’t as prestigious as non-paying ones. And no, I’m not implying that payment is the be-end-all, either.

      Yes, perhaps we are ultimately saying the same thing, and I really “agree with you,” but your initial barb–and it was a barb, you won’t convince me otherwise–that some writers are on the “academic track” implies those writers are somehow less artistic because they happen to teach within academia.

  61. mimi

      ZZZIPPY hi 
      what?
      think i only left you this one comment here at hg

  62. Victor Schultz

      i was actually kinda excited when i noticed nick mamatas and breece arguing with each other–breece/mfbomb and mamatas have been in some of the more entertaining internet arguments i’ve read in the last few years. in boxing terms, i felt like we had two well-schooled fighters with good technical skills, but their inherent love for a good fight promised that no matter how disciplined they tried to stay, at some point, someone would get buzzed, the tactical chess match would be over, and it would break into an all-out war. mamatas would shelve his jab, breece would stop giving angles, and they’d just stand in the middle of the ring and wing power shots at each other. hardcore fight fans knew it was a can’t-miss barnburner.

      but that fight never developed. i dunno what it was. maybe breece ain’t right for the weight class; maybe mamatas overtrained. it could’ve been a bad style matchup–mamatas’s counterpunching style bothered breece, got him out of rhythm, while breece’s swarming pressure and roughhouse tactics prevented mamatas from really letting his hands go. in any case, neither fighter was at his best tonight, and the fight ended on a technical draw after an inadvertent clash of heads opened huge gashes on both men. the fans go home disappointed.

  63. herocious

      Hey! Look at this. I took the summer off to handpress the new Tiny TOE Press book. I figured maybe I could cover part of my monthly duties making books. I’m making copies right now but not nearly enough orders have come in to make me feel even halfway decent. I’m eating mostly pinto beans and rice and, for a treat, cheese. This should get me through the summer, at which point school will resume and I’ll tutor math again. If anyone wants a good book that embodies the art of writing and the art of bookmaking, plz email me TinyTOEPress@gmail.com OK?