Photo via Wikimedia Commons
Since childhood I’ve always been good at recognizing patterns. During a spelling test in second grade, I realized that my teacher was calling out the words in the same order they were listed in our English textbook, and was able to fill out the remaining blanks in advance, from memory. Walking between the rows of desks as she announced the words, my teacher noticed my completed test, accused me of cheating, and sent me to the principal. My argument (if it can be called that) was that I was just being smart. The principal countered that I was just being a smartass, and I was punished.
I’ve always wished that my second-grade self had not only recognized the pattern, but also understood what it meant — what it said about my teacher, her schedule, her expectations of students. Today my ability to understand patterns has caught up a bit with my ability to recognize them. Writing allows me to pin down patterns and see them more clearly. This clarity reveals not just the patterns themselves, but also my thoughts about them, which, until written, are often just as fuzzy as my initial glimpse of a pattern. Through writing I have discovered both the world and myself, and learned more about how both work. Some of these discoveries are pretty horrifying, since I often choose to write about race. Yet despite the horrors, writing — and all the reading and observing and listening and questioning and frowning it inevitably entails — keeps me alive.
I’d like for this sustenance to be more material than figurative, but that’s not an option. On March 4, 2015, I will begin repaying my student loans. I owe my loan providers $134,374.80. When I am feeling bored and meticulous, I view the patchwork of loans that comprises this behemoth total. There are no accounting errors, no misplaced commas; the number is eerily precise, as if I have been audited by a vindictive Ebenezer Scrooge. Every time I view this sum, I feel almost indifferent. I have accepted it. It seems to have its strongest effects on others; my friends were genuinely concerned when I sent them a screenshot of the total in a group-messaging app. One later said, “give a warning before you show that!” as if I were showcasing a loaded gun or a particularly nasty surgical scar.
My girlfriend’s reaction to my debt is more muted, but also more distressed. Unsure of whether she is an engineer (her actual job) or an economist (not her job), she occasionally spirals into a number-crunching frenzy, pulling back her hair and speaking anxiously as she explains the methodically calculated contents of the latest Excel spreadsheet charting our expenses. “Have you heard about your loans yet?” she asks anxiously.
I applied to have my loans consolidated a month ago. Doing so will centralize my payments to one loan provider and stabilize my numerous interest rates and lead to a longer repayment period — something to the tune of 30 years. “No, I haven’t,” I answer. I try to match her level of anxiety, but it never works. She always sighs, flustered by my apparent tranquility in the face of debt.
To me, my student loan balance is simply a mundane fact of my life. Even when I began looking for work in early January 2014, the pressure I felt to find a new job was primarily rooted in the present, not the future — I was living in New York City and making $600 per month as the head editor for a music magazine. Though I loved the fact that I was being paid to write about hip-hop, financially speaking it was a shit job. I worked 30-plus hours every week managing a virtual staff of writers who were paid nothing and worked out of sheer passion for music, which meant that I could never hold them accountable or have the right to. After quitting in early February following 23 months with the magazine, I spent the next few months finishing my last semester of grad school and frantically seeking work, within the media and beyond.
Media was not very accepting. Humbled by my experience as an underpaid editor and aggressively indifferent about my encroaching loan repayment date, I sought the barest of wages. My sole condition (which I kept to myself) was that I be capable of paying my rent, which was then $950 per month. My conditions seemed so reasonable. I wasn’t even looking for full-time work. I was willing and eager to build a patchwork of writing gigs that would rival the patchwork of my loans. All I needed was the opportunity to start sewing it together.
But my patchwork utopia never materialized. Editors either ignored me outright, even after giving me their direct or personal email addresses, or responded to my submissions as though they were garbage. One asked me to write for free. I’m willing to admit that some of my pitches weren’t the best, but there was always something palpably unwelcoming in both the harsh responses and the opaque silences. As an editor, even when I encountered writing that needed work, I turned down the writing, not the writer.
By April, I was completely broke. I finally accepted the reality of my circumstances after eating my roommate’s frozen chocolate for breakfast, lunch and dinner. This was not sustainable. Two subsidies eventually came from my girlfriend and my generous roommate, and this much-needed assistance abruptly reconfigured my orientation toward the future. After finishing grad school in May, I left New York City for Washington D.C., where I could live with my girlfriend at a significantly reduced cost and an exponentially higher rate of happiness. I spent the summer writing and attending professional job interviews, hoping that one would lead to a position.
None did. I started looking for jobs in retail, and ended up accepting a position at Target. There it was apparent that I was a cog in the machine, nothing else; tellingly, my name badge read: New Team Member. And yet at least Target told me what it thought of me and treated me accordingly. Editors were rarely so forthright. With them I was often given the runaround, receiving compliments for my writing samples or my blog and then being met with deafening silence upon submitting pitches, queries, and even actual commissioned writing. One editor accepted a pitch and then ignored me entirely once I had submitted it.
I now have a full-time job editing business proposals. This has been a splendid development for both my student loan balance and my girlfriend’s exhausted checking account. Paying jobs, especially jobs in which (1) a black male (2) can sit (3) in a room that is (4) heated, (5) lit, (6) regularly cleaned by another person, and (7) devoid of mosquitoes, roaches, sewage, blood, or broken glass, are always to be appreciated. Nevertheless, this is not the greatest development in terms of my professional writing career, about which I have recently grown indifferent.
I never entirely believed in the meritocratic narratives of editors speaking at writing conferences or on panels, but I did always dare to hope that I would be smuggled into the world of professional writing, either by luck or tenacity. My pending loan payment has finally forced me to realize that that is a pricey and unlikely proposition, a desperate gamble. I can no longer afford to buy into writing as a job. My debts are too large and my wallet is too small. Writing professionally requires a wallet that can expand like a stomach wall on Thanksgiving. It requires investments in capital and time that run far beyond the margins of a reasonable ledger, even one that is strategically, desperately managed.
Most of all, it seems to require a connection, not to the rhythms and patterns of the world, not to interesting experiences, not even to the everyday practice of writing, but to the gatekeepers. I once heard a talk in which an editor encouraged aspiring writers to ask him out for coffee, as if everybody who wanted to write for him lived in his neighborhood, in his city, in his region, in his income bracket, on his schedule. The power of writing, especially in the digital age, is supposed to be its ability to bridge gaps, whether temporal, geographic, spatial, or racial. But in my experience, proximity and access still reigns supreme. We use the word “pitch,” but sometimes it seems more like a handoff. And the hands are often the same shade.
I don’t think there is some collective conspiracy to keep underprivileged, brown, female, and queer writers on the margins, but it’s hard to look at this pattern and view it as a mere coincidence. I’ve been an editor. I know about the recurring tidal waves of emails, the treacherously protean working hours, the cranky writers, the faulty Wi-Fi, the delayed or unissued paychecks. These aren’t ideal working conditions, and they can definitely be obstacles to financial security, a good night’s rest, a healthy social life.
But they are not obstacles to diversity. A lack of diversity is what happens when editors see inclusion as “accepting submissions from all candidates, regardless of sex, race, nationality, etc.,” but don’t see a problem with that “acceptance” stopping at their inboxes. Accept doesn’t have to be a passive verb. Writers on the margins can be actively solicited, specifically and generally, individually and collectively.
And there are a ton of ways to go about this. You can be explicit and target a specific group or experience in a call for submissions. You can solicit and recruit specific writers you like. You can continually reach out to organizations like the Asian American Journalists Association, the National Association of Black Journalists, or the Native American Journalists Association. You can reach out to college organizations like sororities, fraternities and student groups. You can identify prominent writers within underrepresented groups and ask to tap into their networks. In an issue of Scratch, former Atlantic editor Alexis Madrigal described how contributing editor Ian Bogost serves as a kind of HOV lane for writing about technology and objects, which, it was implied, might not normally get through the editorial pipeline. Getting these relationships with writers off the ground will definitely involve more emails (sorry), but these are precisely the kinds of relationships — with organizations, with established writers, with friends — that already feed editorial pipelines in countless ways.
I don’t expect editors to become human resources experts, to make and publish rigorous transparency indexes (Scratch actually does that, ha), to have daily calls for writers on Twitter (though that would be awesome), to turn away their regular contributors. I’m also not implying that editors alone have the power to change the structure that currently makes the pool of freelancers so white, male, educated, and well-off. But when editors make decisions about what they reject and what they accept, they should take responsibility for those decisions — no more lamely claiming that they “just accept the best pitches!” as if entire demographics are unable to offer good or interesting ideas. No more staring at homogenous submissions folders and “wishing for diversity,” like it’s a goddamn unattainable dream house. No more seeing new writers only as “potential risks” when all writers are potential risks. You either do the work, finding and welcoming and fostering different voices, or you don’t — acknowledging that, either way, what you choose to publish plays a role in determining how many writers move on (like me), and how many stick around, feeling welcome.
I may sound bitter, but I’m really not. I accept what has happened and where I am today. It’s just difficult not to lament what could have been. Seeking paying writing opportunities in the world of professional writing is like bidding at an auction in which the auctioneers charge first an entry fee (education) and a service fee (unpaid or low-paying internships), and then only accept offers from bidders they recognize, regardless of the presence of better, or just plain other, bids. And that’s before you tally up the other fees and the externalities, like student loans and living in expensive cities where so much media is based, which already has many striving bidders severely in the red.
Of course, I haven’t totally given up. I still do business with respectable auctioneers. But after recognizing and understanding the particular pattern at work in the writing world, it’s just too risky for me to keep waiting around, hoping that someone will finally blow the dust off of my constantly accumulating, constantly rewritten, and constantly pitched writing. I can’t wager my future on the arbitrary machinations of an industry that doesn’t value my time or what I can produce. My future has arrived, and it costs me $134,374.80, with interest.
Tags: diversity, stephen kearse, work, writing
I think it’s always been tough to make a living as an artist; no one should be particularly surprised. But this was a nice, honest piece. I liked the anecdote of second-grade you.
I think it’s easier than it’s ever been. There’s a thousand and one ways to hawk your work now that didn’t exist twenty years ago and half of them bypass any kind of editorial gatekeeper, they just don’t resemble the really visible ways of producing or selling creative work we recognized when we were little. What’s the equivalent of this article from the 90s, a zine put together with a couple other kids from the neighborhood, Xeroxed on your own dime and dropped off wherever someone wouldn’t throw it away? Where were Patreon, Saatchi, Amazon direct-pub? It’s still a hell of a lot more work and a lot less secure than taking some retail or office job, but the collegiate notion that an English major can ever expect a nice New York loft where they sit around and compose excruciatingly profound missives to respected national magazines on whatever subject interests them or write the great American novel for a regular stipend is fucking poison and I want to go back and murder everyone who tried to tell me shit like that. There were many, and they all knew better.
It’s sort of nauseating to see that this is still going on, really. Ten years ago at least there was some excuse for not taking all the bright-eyed kids who wanna be a rockstar and warning them that the monthlies and newspapers are a sinking ship that can’t even support the known quantities who’ve been there forever, that going into debt to pursue them (or wasting time doing anything other than developing a close personal relationship with the chief editor’s dad) was self-destruction. That was almost news, ten years ago.
I think you come round to contradicting your first sentence, but I would still like to clarify (in agreement with your second sentence) that it’s easier than ever to advertise your writing — not, as citystillbreath said, to “make a living as an artist.”
Do journalists and editors count as artists now, by the way? They seem equally endangered. :/
I don’t think I’m contradicting, just maybe being unclear that the bar for making a living doing writing or art is lower than ever, it just involves abandoning being starstruck by the venues that were household names when we were small, because they’re not what they once were and trade on their names to grind people up with abandon. You’re a fool if you pursue the New York fine art circuit instead of finding a way to mass-produce whatever you do and hawk it at market yourself. You’re sacrificing yourself to prop up some dude whose business model’s failed if you give up money to chase a byline in the Atlantic or the Times. I know many, many artists who flatly would not have been artists had they been born thirty years sooner. None of them work for or have showings at any names you’d have recognized from college.
I think it’s much harder for journalists than fiction writers/poets/comic bookers/jewelers/photographers/painters/sculptors/etc. (that’s where I was originally aiming, fresh out of school and just in time to catch the very last of the awful $25-a-day gigs from when the local papers fired all their staff photographers), their traditional business model just exploded dramatically and nobody’s quite figured out how to pick up the pieces yet, but where I see people making a decent go of it who aren’t Thomas fuckin Friedman it’s still in basically zine style small press and pay blogging, with a heavy emphasis on specialized niche subjects rather than NYT-style general local/world news and opinions. Nobody hires editors.
Buzzfeed and Upworthy were both hiring editors last fall when I was doing my job hunt, but I don’t know how much that brightens the journalism editing job prospects.
(There are plenty of corporations hiring editors, but I don’t think that’s the kind of editing this thread is talking about)
There’s way more competition now too.
Comes with the territory of the bar being lower. But there’s also more room to make a living doing stuff nobody’s competing in that used to be too niche to be a viable income source, like English-language Kurdish news or publishing comic books on how to be a starving student or brass horns, people wear fucking horns now, that is I guess a thing and not on Halloween
Personally I’d much rather have the problem of finding a way to stand out in the crowd as someone worth spending money on than the older problem of spending years and tens of thousands of dollars fitting myself into the mold of the narrow range of available mainstream jobs, as determined by a tiny handful of gatekeepers who’ve placed themselves between the people what make stuff and the people what buy stuff. I just wish they gave people some idea that that’s the actual problem they should be concerning themselves with before dumping them on the street with a house’s worth of debts
It’s just crazy how people in positions of power can just sit back and, like you said, “wish for diversity.” If you want it, go out and get it! The meritocratic argument is so tired and it belies real laziness on the part of people in positions of power. You’re lacking diversity because the entire system is set up to keep you from getting it! So you have to do some work to overcome those roadblocks!!
Agh, sorry, anyway, this is a lovely piece, and I’m glad you’ve landed in a good job.
One thing is abundantly clear in this piece: you have talent. Someone give this dude a chance and a paycheck!
I honestly just read this and shrugged. So desensitized. I agree with what you’ve written, but I just don’t see much hope for a lot of people, myself included. What moody says is that you need tons of physical energy and mental stability and confidence and networking skills if you want to defeat the odds, and some just lack in one or more of those departments. Forget about luck.
I’m still young but feel my soul is starting to die. I might as well choose a safer route. And it kills me, but I just think I can’t fight the fight no more.
I’m no writer, and this is just me rambling about my POV, but fuck. This situation fucks with your head. Especially if you suffer from a mental illness, which is commonly associated with creative minds. That’s even a larger problem.
Feeling your soul start to die sounds pretty terrible, Mario. “Patchwork utopias” tend not to materialize. On the other hand, “safer routes” don’t always wind up being so safe. Good luck to you on your road.
I think the auction-house situation you’ve described is applicable to nearly everything that qualifies as a “profession,” these days. Writing is not necessarily separate from all of that.
Stephen, if you are interested in chatting with a full-time freelance writer who also reviews pitches, I would be happy to schedule a Gchat session. I come from a hack writing perspective, in that I’ve written everything from byline-free “how to braid hair” articles to product descriptions, and that’s how I hustled my way into better jobs and bylines. I can share all the advice I have, if you are still thinking about pursuing a writing career alongside your current job.
(Also, the majority of the freelancers I know and work with are women. For the record.)
This was super cool and insightful.
Making it about me: man, do I recognize that feeling of “Oh. I can’t afford this. Ok.” from back when I was applying to college. I got in Oh. There’s a catch. Change of plans. That’s unfortunate.
I was literally just thinking, “I should ask around in my friends and network to see who’s got some good advice about freelance writing,” and then BOOM, here you are, ready to make sure I understand exactly how much work I need to put into digging my own grave.
Thanks, I guess.
Interesting!!
Great piece. The auction metaphor was very well-written, and could apply to a number of situations.
This is an excellent piece. It’s heartbreaking to hear how much still depends on knowing the right people (fitting the right profile).
Where I’m at in my writing career: workin’ a temp job, where I find out there are literally janitors who make more money than me. (Not that they shouldn’t.)
“Seeking paying writing opportunities in the world of professional writing is like bidding at an auction in which the auctioneers charge first an entry fee (education) and a service fee (unpaid or low-paying internships), and then only accept offers from bidders they recognize, regardless of the presence of better, or just plain other, bids”
Created an account just to say: this is excellent. And this sentence so accurately describes my life at this moment, and I’m not even trying to be anything as fancy as a writer.
Have you tried writing technical documentation? Working in high-tech, this seems to always be a pain point in projects as engineers hated this task and it is commonly hastily put together … just throwing out some ideas. Good luck!
I’m with you. I’ve worked as a professional writer (journalist, marketing) for 18 years and I’m now enrolled in an accounting program. I loved my job while it lasted, but with a mortgage, kid, no benefits, no retirement funds, and 28 year until I turn 70 and retire (being realistic) it’s not something I could afford to continue.
I’m on the same boat – and grasping for a way out of the pit. I worked for more than 10 years writing tutorials for tech mags in Greece, in Greek. Then, the crisis came and the tech mages were some of the first that went bust.
Fortunately, a colleague had the fine idea we jump on the internet bandwagon, create our own sites and, in the long run, get stinkin’ rich. As you might have guessed, that didn’t turn out exactly as we planned. That was two to three years from my life. I’m still running one of those sites, almost by myself (a friend helps occasionally) just to “have a presence” online.
No probs, a great project came along – a huge site some former colleagues said would change the face of tech sites in Greece. We’d gotten earlier in “the Internet game” than them, and we weren’t just “writing” like them, we also knew how to do adequate-to-great design for the web AND implement it (over WordPress). So, we became the tech-dogs of the team, working our asses off to create the uber-site where AFTER we’d created it, the rest of the team would start to write as well. To promote it. To make it the most successful of its kind – in Greece. Some months before its completion, and after a lot of delays, the rest of the team (who always wanted to add more, more and MORE features “so that it will be 200% successful”, with us playing catch-up to their sometimes even totally idiotic ideas), they decided “the project was unfeasible and, hey, in the meantime we’ve all got new jobs – apart from you two, who were busting your asses of to make things happen”. That was another two years from my life.
And now, here I am. Something more than one year later, unemployed, unable to find a new job – the only thing I ever did was “write tech stuff in Greek”. Hunting for gigs in English, hoping that someone, anyone, will give me a chance to prove that although I’m not a master of English, my past knowledge in tech, working with computers, gadgets and consoles since the era of Commodre 64, would make up for any errors in any articles I might write. Nope. No go. And no hope.
Some months ago I’ve reached a new psychological low. Not seeing any chance for anything in the horizon, I swallowed my pride and mentioned all of the above on Reddit. Some dudes there – not more than three or four people – showed their support. They told me I should try my luck at two-three sites that weren’t too strict. That could possibly accept me. There I had a chance of making some bucks, enough to make a poor man’s living. Once again, no go. There went the last year of my life up to today: looking for gigs like those they’d mentioned.
And here I am now. Almost broke, unable to see any light at the end of the tunnel. A dude who loved sketching who’s studied graphic design but didn’t work a single day in his life as a designer (since I got into mags from the get-go). A former tech writer unable to find ANY paying gigs in the language he wrote almost professionally for more than a decade. Who can’t find ANY paying gigs in English since, well, as you can probably see, I’m not as proficient the language as I’d (and the employers I approached) would like me to be.
I’m 38 years old now. I can write in Greek and English. I can translate from one to the other. I can sketch, Design. Do basic video editing. “Fix” computers. And yet, I can’t find anything to help me put some food on the table. I feel like this is the very definition of feeling hopeless, waiting for a miracle to happen. It hasn’t, up to now, and I’m really starting to give up hope. For anything.
If anyone has any ideas on what I could do to pull myself out of this hole, I’m open to any suggestion.
Hugs, man. I’m going to put my thinking cap on for you.
Ducklord,
You may wish to check out Proz.com. It is a website for professional translators, and there is lots of support and information there to benefit from. It is also a good place to meet potential clients.
Unfortunately, a word I actually know in Greek, I can’t send you to a paying gig. But I’m looking to make a keyboard app that needs a designer to review it & someone to (help me) code it. Sadly, my techie CS friends claim not to be able to help. If you wanted to partner up, I could either figure out a way to pay hourly or work up a contract for shared profits (on the $20 it will make selling it to family). Look me up online by my handle if you want to talk possibilities. I am also willing to listen to rants about how austerity in Greece is stupid and shortsighted
Just popping in to say I work regularly with Nicole and she is awesome. Definitely go look up her advice about the business of freelancing!
“One editor accepted a pitch and then ignored me entirely once I had submitted it.” That is awful, and I’m sorry.
Thank you for your points about recruiting writers with diverse backgrounds and experiences. As an editor, it’s easy to just work with the pitches and submissions that fill my overflowing inbox. Making the effort to broaden my network is important, and I need to do more of it. Thanks for the kick in the pants.
*raises hand* I'd like in, please!
But your CV presumably shows those retail jobs alongside the internships, which for me shortlisting candidates was always a huge plus. I think luckierluckiest is referring to the people who clearly come from wealthy families who may have a great education and can afford all the extras but have never actually learned how to work.
My school instructs us not to put retail jobs on our resumes because the legal field supposedly still conforms to the one page resume rule.
Me too! Hope I'm not too late for this, but long time reader, first time poster, and I'm just getting in to writing (and yes, also doing other things for sustenance.)
Do you know about income-based student loan repayment? It’s a new thing, but it’s real. It caps loan payments at something like 10% of your total income, and forgives them after (I think) 10 years.