Investing in your Writing
Wednesday, 14 December 2022
Aspiring Writers & Hobby Writers
This blog is for you
“Editing is just so expensive. I don’t want to spend that much. Writing is supposed to make me money, not cost me money.”
“I can’t spend any money on my writing. It’s just a hobby.”
Those are two of the comments I see most often in various writing groups; the first usually comes from people who strive to turn writing into a career, the second from people who—for whatever reason—consider writing naught but a hobby.
I will first address the career writers, primarily focusing on those who are aspiring to turn their writing into a full-time career. The writers who have achieved the holy grail of paying their mortgage with their writing are either fully aware of the benefits of hiring an editor, or they’ve achieved a cult following despite their avoidance of editing professionals. If you’ve achieved success with the help of an editor (or many editors), go ahead and tell them how much you appreciate them. If you know any writers who are reluctant to seek editing services, please send them a link to this post.
If you are part of the latter group and have achieved a measure of success without the assistance of an editor, I urge you to read on. However, I do not expect my words to be powerful enough to change your stance on the subject (although if I do manage such a herculean triumph, please stroke my ego by sending me a message).
Aspiring career writers, hello. I’m happy to have you here.
Are you on the fence about hiring an editor? Worried about the expense? Unable to justify the expense because the whole point of a career is to make money, not spend it? Well, you’re not alone. And while your concerns are valid, I hope to successfully communicate why you need to shove those thoughts aside and open your mind and your writing to the delightful services of an editor. (Yeah, I am totally biased, but what do you expect?)
A career writer is an entrepreneur. A business owner. If one wishes to sustain their career as a writer, that mindset is necessary. And one of the tenets of any business is you have to spend money to make money.
We’ve all heard it, and you’re probably rolling your eyes right now, but it’s painfully true. Just to get a job, you must have the means to find out about the position you’re seeking, which will likely require an internet connection. You need a certain wardrobe to apply for the job. If the job requires special skills or education, you likely will have paid to attain those things. If you want to start a business, you will need to purchase equipment, as well as pay to learn the skills you wish to offer, or spend money to learn how to create the product(s) you’re looking to sell. At some point, if you achieve the level of success you’ve strived for, you will need to hire and train staff.
Career writing is the same; although your business model may differ slightly from that of someone who starts their own carpet cleaning business or someone who makes and sells jewelry. You need equipment—a computer, a desk, a chair. You need to know how to write—classes, books. And you need someone to help correct the overuse of your favorite word (everyone has a crutch word . . . or ten), someone to help with your errant comma usage (or total lack of punctuational regard). A writer also needs someone who can make sure the story they’re so familiar with makes sense to outside readers and will give an unbiased opinion without concern or fear of hurt feelings. An editor has many responsibilities. Many more than I will delve into here, but all of which will help you grow as a writer. I hired my own editor to look at this article, and she pointed out the wild abandon with which I sprinkle parentheses. Apparently, that style of writing can be exhausting to read and, believe it or not, I removed about half of my parenthetical darlings. The lesson I learned about reckless parentheses further proves that every writer can benefit from professional editing—even editors.
“But Jaime! I have a master’s degree in creative writing. What can an editor do for me that I can’t do for myself?”
A formal education in writing is incredibly beneficial to anyone who wishes to pursue a career as a writer, but it does not replace the services of an independent editor, and here’s why. Everyone experiences bias when it comes to their own work, and writers are no exception. To paraphrase Merriam-Webster, bias is the inclination of outlook. In layman’s terms, it is the tendency to see things in a particular way, whether that tendency is formed by prior personal experience or what they’ve heard from others. Confirmation bias, seeing what we expect to see, is the type of bias that often comes into play when people evaluate their own writing. A writer knows what their story is supposed to communicate, so they are more likely to believe the story hits all the right notes. They will automatically fill gaps in their mind because they know everything about the story. Therefore, they are unlikely to catch things like missing details, plot holes, and character inconsistencies. Many writers utilize beta readers to help catch things of that nature, and some writers hire an editor to complete a manuscript evaluation or developmental edit. There are advantages to both options, which I won’t get into here. Regardless of which option you choose, every writer must have an unbiased third party read their writing to ensure readers receive the intended message.
As for the other aspects of writing—sentence structure, spelling, punctuation, grammar, etc., a good editor will be trained in all those things and are more knowledgeable than most. They will know the most current industry conventions, how to rework sentences to remove filler words, strategies to ensure the character’s name with eleven vowels and two consonants is spelled the same way every time, how and why to tighten wordiness, and they will know how to properly punctuate tricky sentences (see the first sentence in this paragraph. I used an em dash before listing the aspects of writing but did not use an em dash after. Why? you may ask, and I shall tell you. When using an em dash before and after words in a sentence, the rest of the sentence must work without the words inside the em dashes. In my example, the list of writing elements after the em dash is necessary context for the sentence that follows, so an em dash after the list would not work.). A good editor will also be able to catch far more than an untrained eye.
“But Jaime! My book/article/short story doesn’t have to be perfect for people to love it!”
No, it doesn’t need to be perfect. But if you want to make a career out of your writing, taking the necessary steps to publish the best version of your words will give you a far greater chance of achieving your goal. Like anything else, a career in writing is a journey. Your first book will not be as good as your twentieth (that’s the goal, anyway). You will get better as you continue down your writing path. With the help of a good editor, you will take longer strides, you will grow in leaps and bounds as opposed to fits and starts. Don’t shortchange your career as a writer, and don’t allow your fear to invest in your craft get in the way of your greatness. I challenge you to pursue your dream with the necessary fortitude to nurture a career in writing. You are tasked with the obligation to commit to your future, your career, your potential. Go forth and conquer. Hire an editor and show the world that you take yourself as seriously as you wish to be taken.
Please enjoy a short intermission
And we’re back! I shall now address the hobby writers in the bunch.
“I can’t spend any money on my writing. It’s just a hobby.”
That is a phrase I’ve seen more times than I can count, often from people who are planning to publish. The first time I saw it, I nodded in agreement. It made sense. They weren’t looking to make money off their writing, so why should they spend a bunch of money to write?
For some reason, I reacted quite differently the next time I encountered this argument. Perhaps my own bias (*nudge* you see what I did there?) caused me to look at hobbies from an alternate perspective. In any case, those words had a profound effect on me. So profound, in fact, they prompted me to start a blog, just so I could write this half of this particular article.
Hobbies can be free? Why can’t my husband find one of those? All his hobbies cost a fortune, and he just keeps finding more.
I began racking my brain for hobbies that might be free (or super cheap). Perhaps I lack imagination, but my conclusions weren’t promising.
Hiking! I thought. But no, that doesn’t fit the bill. While hiking itself can be free, the shoes and gear can be expensive.
Painting miniatures, perhaps? Nope. I know firsthand (ahem, husband) painting miniatures is so not cheap.
Oh, cooking! People gotta eat, right? Sure, that’s true. Except when one embarks on a hobby, they must account for a period of growth, a margin of failure. While in the past such failures may not have been too large an expense to swallow (no pun intended), anyone who’s been grocery shopping lately knows the level of investment required simply to cook dinner, and that investment only increases when one takes into account the potential for occasional error while embarking upon the journey of culinary excellence.
Crafting is an especially popular hobby these days, and I think just about everyone knows how expensive it can be. We likely all know someone who has spent thousands of dollars on craft supplies, yet they find themselves lucky to crank out a wreath or a crocheted scarf once a year. And while collecting is a hobby—even if that collection is craft supplies—it isn’t cheap.
Maybe you know a hobbyist who enjoys playing video games? Only they don’t just like to play. No, they like to buy several dozen video games a year, only to continue playing the same games year after year, while gleefully watching their Steam, Xbox, and/or PlayStation game libraries expand into the thousands. Whoops, I may have gotten a little too close to home with that one. Let’s move on.
Writing is a perfectly acceptable hobby. An admirable pursuit, even. And if one were to write solely for the sake of writing, not for the consumption of others, then sure, why spend money on it? However, if one’s hobby is writing for the sake of sharing their words with the world, I say, based on my previously mentioned conclusions for hobbies in general, hobby writers have all the more reason to spend money on cover art, editing, proofreading, marketing, and all those other little things that go into publishing.
Nobody picks up a hobby with the expectation of receiving a return on their investment. People will spend hundreds (sometimes even thousands) of dollars on a new interest, only to decide they weren’t really all that interested to begin with. Or maybe the fun lasts for a few months, then slowly fades, leaving them to search for the next new thing that will provide them the same excitement they used to get from learning to play the kazoo. Those expensive golf clubs, new hiking boots, boxes of dusty craft supplies—the discarded remains of failed or forgotten hobbies—they mostly end up in the attic until they’re shamefully placed at the curb at 2:00 a.m. in the hopes everything will be gone before their spouse wakes up; or perhaps they’re posted on Marketplace with the optimistic goal of recouping a fraction of the money they spent in pursuit of entertainment.
Writing is a hobby that can actually generate a return, no different than the sparkly tumblers or handmade jewelry we see all over social media. Don’t get me wrong; I understand people may derive joy from creating something without having the desire to sell the products of their labor. If you’re in that camp, it is perfectly acceptable for your writing to remain a pleasing pastime, one that doesn’t cost as much as tennis lessons or a new mountain bike, and I say good for you!
What if you do choose to sell the product of your hobby and it doesn’t make a return? Well, what were you expecting? It’s a hobby!
Now, consider for a moment how much you (or your spouse or children) have spent on hobbies over the years, and ask yourself why you wouldn’t spend money on your writing hobby.
If you’re still on the fence, here are some more reasons you should.
Because hobbies cost money, and your words deserve the investment of your time and cash. Because if you’re going to do something, why not do it right? Because of all the reasons listed in the first half of this article for career writers. Because if you want those words you wrote as a hobby to be polished and pretty and to show the amount of love and care you poured into them, maybe your hobby shouldn’t be free after all.