Farland’s Writing for Fun and Profit

There are some hard realities when it comes to writing, especially if you want to make a living at it. But today, I want to focus on some of the other benefits of writing that come from just writing for fun. I love writing because 1) It fulfills my primal need to communicate more deeply than saying, "Thank you, and have a nice day" does. I find deep satisfaction in writing a beautiful paragraph. 2) A writer can live anywhere in the world that he wants to--so long as he can afford the price. That means that if I want to live on a deserted island in Samoa and power my laptop with solar rays, I can do it. The Antarctic--no problem. England, Ireland, New Zealand--all high on my list of places to retire. I love not being tied to a local economy. (I've known writers who have moved to places like Samoa, Chile, and so on in order to save money. In some cases, they've cut their cost of living down to under $500 per month.) 3) I don't have a boss breathing down my neck--other than my wife. I don't have to play office politics. I don't have to get the pizzas to your door in eight minutes, guaranteed. In short, the job-related stress is minimal. 4) I get to work on my own schedule, within reason. That means that if I want to work for twenty hours today because I'm in the mood, I can do that. I've done it before. But if I feel lousy and would prefer to do research by reading the novels or watching the movies of my competitors, I can do that, too--and it's tax deductible! 5) I'm my own businessman. That means that if I make a lot of money for the company this year, I get to keep it. 6) The dress standards at work are very lax. For all that you know, I could be writing this in my underwear. Other than pole-dancing, what other job lets you work in your underwear? In short, there are a lot of reasons to like this job even if you're not making a lot of money. But the truth is that it is easier to make a living than it might sound to some. Years ago, I was teaching a class on writing, and I told the class that "Being a writer is both far easier and far harder than you will ever imagine." Brandon Sanderson was taking the class, and said that he didn't understand what I meant--until he did it. It's hard to be a writer because you have to be diligent and dedicated from the start. No one cheers you on in the beginning. Instead, you push yourself without fanfare. In fact, if you're like me, your parents will try to dissuade you, and many of your friends will tell you that you're deluding yourself into believing that you can make a career in writing. So it seems impossibly hard, often for years. Then you sell your first novel. Suddenly you have a little income (on top of the pizza job you've been hanging onto). And then you begin selling foreign rights and movie rights, and you have more money than you know what to do with (after having learned for years how to survive on nothing). And then you begin to wonder, "Why don't more people do this?" It is, after all, the easiest job in the world! So the question arises, is it really a viable career choice? How much money does the average writer make? When I was in college back in the early eighties, I used to hear about a survey that had been taken that showed that the average writer in America makes something like $5,200 per year. That was disheartening. Interestingly, I still hear that figure being thrown out at conventions. The survey, it seems, was taken back in the late 1960s and the same figures have been used in writing classes ever since. Now, in 1968 my father was working in a sawmill for $1.25 per hour. He wasn't making half as much as the "average" writer. I don't know how much other writers make, but I am willing to bet that I still make twice as much as your average sawmill worker. There are lots of sources of income for a novelist. Let me just give you a few. 1) Novel rights sales. When you sell a novel, you typically make much of your money by selling American rights. But you also resell the same novel to foreign countries. Thus, when I write a book, I may sell it in the U.S., then to England, Germany, France, Italy, China, Russia, Spain, and so on. I've sold and resold the rights to some books more than twenty times. In some countries, you may catch on very well. For example, Marion Zimmer Bradley was fairly successful as a fantasy author in the U.S., but in Germany she was the #1 bestselling author period--and she made millions of dollars on foreign rights. I've known American authors who've made 90 percent of their income selling books in countries like Japan, Romania, and England. 2) Ancillary rights sales. When you sell a novel, you may often option off the movie rights to the book. Thus, you might sell the book rights for as little as five thousand dollars in the U.S., but suddenly get a million dollar paycheck for movie rights. Books can also be turned into plays, video games, role-playing games, and so on. I knew one novelist a few years back who became so popular in Japan that he made a sizable income selling his picture--to go on t-shirts. (For some reason, I have never been able to break into David Farland action figures, though.) 3) Work-for-hire. Once you become an established author (and perhaps even before), you may be asked to do work for hire. In these cases your job might be to write novels set in someone else's universe. Now, I've personally written novels in the Star Wars and Mummy universes, and I've helped design and script videogames for StarCraft, Xena, and others. Some of those projects paid royalties, and some didn't. But the important point here is that just with these little projects, back when I did such things, I typically made more than your average pizza delivery guy or sawmill worker could make in a year--and I was working at it for less than three months per year. 4) Contests. In college I worked as a prize writer to make money on the side. There aren't many contests open to professional writers, but there are literary awards. Some of these are run through state-sponsored contests, others are voted on by juries, and some are fan-based popularity contests. Most of them either offer a cash prize, or they will help boost your sales--and thus pay dividends on the back end. 5) Work outside your primary field. As a writer, I typically write one epic fantasy novel per year. I also write at least one YA novel per year. Beyond that I may write other things. One year I wrote a 200,000-word historical novel. Another year I wrote half of a thriller. I've made as much as $15,000 in a year writing short stories on the side. But I know writers who like to write in many other fields--mystery, romance, horror, and so on. One favorite for many authors is writing nonfiction. Let's say that in your research on vampires, you become an expert on the real Count Dracula, or Transylvania, or blood diseases. Why not turn your notes into a nonfiction book? So for a novelist it is often easy to move into a secondary field--such as writing articles for magazines. Beyond writing outside your field, why not consider writing in another medium? I suspect that I could make a fine living as a screenwriter, if I wanted. My credentials as a New York Times Bestseller would go a long way toward gaining credibility--particularly in scripting movies in the fantasy and science fiction fields. Add that to my background in gaming and movie production . . . and even I have to wonder why I don't give more of a try. 6) Teaching. As a writer, you may find yourself in a position to take a full-time job teaching creative writing. I used to work part-time at Brigham Young University, teaching the science fiction and fantasy writing classes, and I turned down a full-time position simply because I knew that it would interfere with my writing schedule. But a lot of authors enjoy the security of doing this. You can of course teach even outside schools. As you know, I teach writing seminars throughout the year. 7) Work on the side in writing-related fields. I work as the coordinating judge for a large international writing contest. I've known other authors who've worked as fiction editors or reviewers, or who've worked writing back copy for other people's novels. I've done a little work as the Director of Storytelling for an animation company, a job that required me to hire and evaluate other writers' work along with creating story lines for feature films. In short, when you're a writer, you typically don't wear just one hat. You can if you want to, but I like to do a lot of different things. Keeping busy makes life so much more interesting--as long as you love what you're doing!