Modern writers (professional and aspiring) have two great, interwoven enemies; time and money. It’s not as though either have ever been friends of the creative mind. Unless you “made it big—” meaning patronage in the old days or massive commercial success in the last century or two—your creative passions had to wait ‘til you got home from your day job, probably at the same factory or field that took three of your toes. If you were lucky, you could make a coin here and there, but most weren’t and still aren’t. There’s a reason that most literature through history was made by the privileged class; they were the only ones with the time, education, leisure, and funding to write consistently.

While the opportunity to write has become more common over the past century or so, and I acknowledge that we’re better off than we were before, this post is about “the now.” It’s about the problems unique to modern writers, and those that weigh more heavily on modern scribes than their predecessors. These problems often go unknown by the friends that smile at you as you tell them you want to be a writer, unaware that their time with you is about to be shredded all to pieces.

Writing—any creative art, really— requires two things in spades; practice and thoughtful consumption. You won’t get better without practicing your craft, and you won’t know what’s good and bad (or what you like and dislike) without spending time on reading and analyzing the work of others. Anyone who wants to be a writer has likely heard, somewhere along the line, that writers should “write a lot and read a lot.” These two factors, alone, are incredibly time consuming. I, myself, spend an hour and a half writing (or 2,000 words, depending upon the project) almost every day, even if that means staying up ‘til 5 A.M. On average, I read a book a week— a number that wouldn’t be possible without audiobooks and travel-heavy jobs.  

That’s our starting line. We begin writing regularly and reading more often, more broadly, or more critically than we did before, looking to implement what works and avoid what doesn’t.

But, if we hope to get published, then we need to spend time editing our work, too. Not just editing, but going back, tearing the piece apart, stitching it back together, snipping off the stray hairs, buffing out the dents and propping up those plotlines whose hollow floors creak and echo underfoot. Take care, though; too many spend too much time trying to “perfect” a single piece. Some of us over-edit, but more often we burn time that would be best spent elsewhere. Procrastination may be the thief of time, but perfectionism is its friggin’ pickpocket. Abyssal self-doubt or bottomless narcissism usually appear about now, bringing or exacerbating a host of mental health issues—a subject worthy of its own post.

Done editing? Is the panic attack over? Good. Now you have to shoot the piece to your beta readers or critique it with your writing circle. Don’t have beta readers or a writing circle? Guess you’ll have to spend time looking for some, then.

After a year and a hundred-odd edits, you realize that something in your writing rings false. It doesn’t take long to figure out what it is; you keep writing about something unfamiliar to you and assuming you can “make do” with your imagination. While “imagination” is a key part of the research process (at least, according to Robert McKee’s “Story”), you also need to do more traditional research. Writing a story set in the mountains? Read up, watch documentaries, and go there yourself. And if you’re writing about cultures or identities outside your own, you’d best invest serious time into figuring out what it’s like to live in their shoes, preferably by talking to them and reading books by people who’ve lived that life. Otherwise, you’ll suffer a very well-deserved backlash. Woe be unto the writer that finds themselves upon the pitchfork of a justified critic.

But, let’s think happy thoughts; you do your research, pound out a few more edits, and have a piece that, you think, might be good enough to publish. But who to publish to? A quick Google search comes up with a hundred-and-eight publishers in your genre, each of whom tell you to read their magazine to get an idea of what they want. You do another google search for “how to know which magazines to submit to,” and your never-ending journey into market research begins.

Again, it’s not as though these issues are new. Some are easier today than they were twenty or thirty years ago; the internet gives you access to a wealth of information, an unlimited number of communities to share your work with, and a nifty thesaurus full of adjectives that definitely did not appear in this post. Plus, word processors have sped up the writing and editorial process, though some argue that same speed can make you sloppy and increase the time spent in edit.

But, with the continuing democratization of literature as a creative and commercialized art form, these improvements have widened the pool of aspiring writers. If you want to stand out, you need to work harder than them, which means a greater investment of time. Make no mistake: the competition is fierce. As a result, you’ve got a few more things to add to your plate.

Platform building’s the main course. With your phone and $20 a month, you can get access to more brand-new media published every day than you could possibly consume in twenty-four hours. Whatever you publish, be it a short story, a novel, or a screenplay, is now competing with all that noise for your reader’s attention. So, some publishing professionals will tell you to build a solid social media platform (Twitter’s the big one for authors), so that you can stand out and have a built-in audience. If nothing else, doing so will connect you to the popular literary landscape… so long as you’re willing to spend a couple hours every week on targeted social media activity.

Now, you’re really getting serious, so you start hitting writing conventions and conferences. The big ones will cost you, and between transportation, hotel rooms, and the conference itself, you’ll probably spend a few grand a pop—money that many of us don’t have. So, you start picking up side gigs or foregoing a few other hobbies to pay for the conference. Whatever it takes to afford the trip.

Which is where money comes in. For most of us, our finances are tied to the hours we spend at work, away from our creative passion. We can try to connect the two—by working as freelance writers or journalists, perhaps— but those have unique time investments of their own. On top of that, those of us in the United States (and several other countries) are often financially crippled by inflation, student loans, ballooning insurance costs and our shrinking purchasing power, all delivered together in a gift basket handed off by previous generations. Given how time-and-money-consuming it is to be poor, that all cuts into both your writing time and mental/physical health. No surprise that writing communities are sometimes crowded with the “upper crust” of society.

I’m not writing this to bitch, or to scare people away from writing. The opposite, really. The fact of the matter is that the longer I’ve done each of these steps, the more they become an every-day part of my life, right up there with eating and taking a shower. But, it’s easy, especially when adding new steps (like, say, trying to build up a friggin’ public presence) to feel like you’re telling your mental health to piss off and hide under a bridge as you scramble to straighten all the toothpicks holding up this lovely little house of cards before a straw flutters down to break the whole thing… which’ll probably happen while you berate yourself for mixing so many metaphors.

Some folks are lucky; they have strong support networks that keep them buoyed, mentally or financially. A few are just rich. I’m sure as hell not in that camp. But, others? They’re just flat-fucking-stubborn. That’s where I tend to fall, I think. It’s important; if you’re stubborn or disciplined or determined enough, you can get yourself to manage all these time investments and continue writing, no matter how tough things get.

I wish I had more advice to give, here. I’m still in the “aspiring” stage, myself. Each of us has to find our own way to deal with these time constraints; by making sacrifices, by finding support networks, or just being hard-headed enough to keep moving forward. The best I can say is that I sympathize with, support, and applaud all the writers and creatives out there struggling to find the time to balance their lives enough to pay the bills, work on their projects, and still live enough a life that they can find something they want to say about it.