Writing careers have a reputation for being financially unstable. Many new writers are told to expect not to make money (perhaps ever) from their work - the old nugget “don’t quit your day job” is a mantra. The recent #publishingpaidme Twitter flurry, while it may have started to highlight racial inequalities in payment, also had a side bar for Australian writers: expect to be paid a lot less here.
This reality of writing pay (I personally feel) often gets used to put aspiring writers down / in their place, one of the many sticks of discouragement not to venture into the industry at all. I don’t like that, but for now, let’s acknowledge that even an “established” author, who’s had a good number of books published, is likely not making a living (even a poor living) from their work. Or if they do, the any certainty of continuing to make a living is not there.
This leaves the aspiring career writer with potentially fulfilling the starving artist stereotype, or slogging away at the soul-crushing day job while writing their work in the cracks and dreaming better times that may actually never come. And honestly, who wants those as the options?
Many writers acknowledge this problem, and talk about playing the long game and doing the work, and being clear about why we do this. And that’s all great. But it still shackles you in the long-term to the luck of the industry. No one ever seems to talk about how else you might be able to industry-proof your writing career. Maybe because it’s somehow dirty to talk about money and art? Or because people’s eyes glaze over when we start to talk about finances?
Whatever it is, fine. If you’re content to roll the dice and hope, have at it. I’m not content with that. And if you’re not, too, then this is where we come to FIRE.
How I got to thinking this way
I’m not just talking out my arse here. We started again with finances in our mid-30s thanks to the stellar combination of terrible investment advice and the GFC. It was the most awful, shitty shit time of my life. Think massive debts and financial advisors who just vanished overnight. We were great with numbers and saving, but we didn’t know how financial services work, and we were clueless about what we’d gotten into. I learned many lessons, but the biggest was NEVER trust other people with your financial security. As I result, I’ve educated myself, learned to trust what I know, and it’s during that education that I came across FIRE.
What is FIRE?
It stands for “financial independence, retire early”, and does what it says on the box. The idea is to live well within your means, stash everything else in investment assets (for me, this means incoming-producing assets like low-cost index funds) and through time, patience and compounding, gain freedom from the 9-5. If you want to know more about FIRE, I’d recommend going to other places, like Aussie Fire Bug and Pat the Shuffler. I’m not an all-things-FIRE officianado. If you don’t want to go hard at FIRE to begin with and need some more basic and easy to follow financial sense to ease into it, then I’d start where I did, with the Barefoot Investor.
(Note: I’m serious about not trusting other people with your finances - don’t take mine or anyone’s word for anything. Do your own research. Make your own choices.)
Where FIRE meets writing
It seems a no-brainer to me that if you aspire to write full-time, knowing it comes with no guarantee of income (let alone riches), that a smart strategy is to make the income-from-writing not a factor. If I’d known these things in my early 20s, instead of taking financial advice from dirty scum line-our-own-pockets advisors, I would have reached the goal in my early 30s. Even now, into my 40s and only a couple of years into doing this, I consider it more than worthwhile. If I get an extra 10 years to write without money worries, fantastic.
I know what some people must be thinking. But I’m not good with money. But that sounds impossible on a lower income / with kids / with debts. I’m not here to tell you this is for everyone, but there’s many people out there in those situations who’ve made it work. If you have a spark of interest at the idea, then do the reading. And the earlier you start, the better it is. There are, of course, trade-offs. Some of the downsides are:
Needing to live well within your means.
Needing to face what you actually spend and owe. I mean really face it.
Needing to stick to a savings/investment program for a good number of years.
If, however, the longer-term goal (writing with a totally writing-independent supporting income) means more to you than a plethora of today’s pleasures, this might be worth looking into. Yes, you’re going to have to practice your writing art while doing other work for some years, but not forever. And you’re probably already doing some version of that - wouldn’t you like to know it will be limited in duration? I can’t imagine anything better than knowing that there will be a day within my control (not the publishing industry’s control) where I won’t depend on writing/teaching/freelancing for money.
So, if you’re aspiring to write full-time (long before retirement), perhaps have a look at FIRE.