Wanna Be A Full-Time Writer? How Good Are You With a Budget?

Being a full-time writer: Is it my dream? How do/will I pay for "life" and write too?

vigorously rubs face

Well, I am a full-time writer, which sometimes translates to living at or below poverty depending on sales.  Shocked? Don't be. Like most creative professions, less than 1% achieve the success that's portrayed in popular entertainment. 

Look--I say this from experience--anyone who is going to walk away from a steady paycheck that affords a middle-class existence (or better) has to accept strict budgeting and lifestyle-reduction changes. This is not an avocado toast soapbox; that's a wholly different discussion. I'm talking about living within seasons of feast and famine. I'm talking about going from having a percent of monthly income being "disposable" after paying essential bills and investments to cutting out things that aren't utilities, rent/mortgage, groceries, car payments, and health insurance. It's a hell of a shock to the system to shift from stability to insecurity. Monthly mani-pedis? Gone. Thursday drinks with the gang? Not every week you don't. That vacation to the Con you attend every year? Eh...maybe. That's now a business cost, so maybe, but you've got to generate enough annual revenue in order to be able to take that as a tax write-off. 

As James mentioned yesterday, US health insurance is an obscene cost of living to which you then have to add actual health care costs--ya know, the list of stuff insurance requires you to pay on top of your premium and deductible and the even longer list of stuff insurance simply doesn't cover. Yes, health insurance costs more than my mortgage. Yes, for the moment, I'm a relatively healthy person. However, health insurance is an inescapable cost at my age, and it's not like I can get a roommate to help share the costs of health insurance (adding a person to the policy would triple the costs!). And predicting the annual increase in premiums? Fugetaboutit, which makes it a bitch to budget. Alas, I can't control the capitalist death-panels that are the US health industry, so I do things like drive a 20yr old car that's paid off and live in a state that doesn't charge an annual property tax on vehicles. Some months are ramen months, and others are chicken thighs. I take the savings where I can when I can. 

Finally, there's the actual business costs. As an indie author, my costs of publishing are incurred upfront (editing, art, marketing, etc.). So if I want to release a book, I have to budget for that. Then I have to estimate when I'll recoup my costs and start generating a profit. Sometimes release dates get pushed because I don't have that couple of grand on hand. There's a reason many authors turn to Kickstarter or the like to fund their indie books. Writing is a constant hustle. You've got to keep producing to keep a market presence. If you lose market presence, you've got to start over to rebuild it, which means recouping your investment is going to take longer. The upshot of being a novelist, however, is that our backlists continue to generate income (assuming we own the rights). The theory is the bigger your backlist, the bigger the financial cushion, the bigger the breath you can take because you can actually pay your bills...and maybe pay to replace that busted water heater.  Warm showers are a wonderful thing, after all. 

None of this is to say you can't have fun and hang with friends while being a full-time writer, but the lifestyle of financial instability does require tradeoffs and often saying "no" to invitations you simply can't afford anymore. For someone who had success in the corporate world, it can be a bitter pill to feel like you're starting over on the bottom rung of life again, even though you're changing careers to something you love. If you're not honest with yourself about everything the change entails, you're going to be in for a world of hurt and embarrassment. Don't pull the "I quit" switch until you've got a plan, a budget, and a slew of reasonable expectations for the next 10 years. 

On Being A Full-Time Writer...

 The subject of the week is Being a Full-Time writer: is it your dream? How do you pay for it?

I AM a full-time writer. I also work a full-time job and have since I started writing. In the very beginning, I worked at a restaurant five to six nights a  week, took a bus from the place were y wife worked in the daytime and she would pick me up around 11 PM every night that I worked. It wasn't exactly fun, but it mostly paid the bills.

That's the catch, you see, paying the bills. When I started as a writer I did a lot of work for hire. Just in case you don't understand that concept yet (I most certainly didn't when I started out) that's when you write for somebody else's intellectual property. The first thing I ever wrote that got published was an eight-page story for Clive Barker's Hellraiser comic. The second thing I got paid for was an Iron Man story that never did see print. Number three was a comic book based on a video game. The fourth was Clive barker's Nightbreed comic, and then I started doing work for roleplaying game companies. All of that was work where they paid me but got to keep the copyright for what I wrote. 

for the record, I'm okay with that. It took me about seven seconds to understand the concept. My work. Their money. They keep my work. How much is it worth to me? That varied a lot. Let's leave it at this: I was making damned decent scratch and some of those works allowed me to pay y bills when the actual day job didn't. Why was that? Because my wife had health issues and paying for insurance took as much money as paying the monthly rent. 

We always make choices Thanks to the preposterously stupid health costs in this country, I required two jobs (along with my wife's employment) to cover the rising costs of health insurance and medications. for the record, I still wound up declaring bankruptcy because of medical bilks at one point. Do I sound bitter? It's only because I am.

My point is, that I have always been a fulltime writer. From day one. Long before I sold anything, I wrote from four to six hours a day. Once I started selling it became longer hours, and coffee became my best friend for YEARS. I also used to put out roughly 5,000 words on an average day, with my best day ever being 11,700 words in one eight-hour stint. If I got the novel finished by the end of that particular month there was a one thousand dollar bonus. Dance monkey, dance!

I have also, with very rare exceptions, worked at least a part-time job ever since The exceptions were all medically related, by the way. Three months off for knee surgery and recovery, and then a little over a year off for cancer and the chemotherapy and radiation treatments, plus recovery time. 

I still write every day. I still work at least four days a week. I still like having medical insurance and sometimes that's damned hard to afford.

You want to be a writer? You write. You want to pay the bills? Well, I didn't marry rich, so I work. This isn't something that bothers me at all I knew the price of admission when I started on this ride, and I've never had a problem with it.  Writing is my passion, and writing never seems like work to me.

My point is simple: We do what we must. I'm hardly the only one, believe me. 

I have over 40 novel-length works to y name. I'm working on three more novels right now, as well as several short stories, collaborative efforts, and two novellas. I have referred to myself as the modern equivalent of a pulp writer more than once because compared to a lot of writers, I have a rather epic word count, 

If you're curious you can see most of my publications listed right here.  

A full BIBLIOGRAPHY is available too.

Fierce Hearts and Adamant Spirits: Charity Anthologies for Ukraine

Hey all! I wanted to use this week's space to share about a project that Jeffe Kennedy and I are involved in. The Romantic Fantasy Shelf put together two amazing anthologies recently that released on March 31st. All proceeds go to the International Rescue Committee which is donating all raised funds to Ukrainian refugees. Receipts will be posted publicly by the Romantic Fantasy Shelf.

Jeffe and I have work in Fierce Hearts, an anthology filled with romantic fantasy and fantasy romance short stories, novelettes, novellas, novels, and chapter samplers for anticipated novels. Adamant Spirits is of the paranormal/sci-fi/urban fantasy romance variety. Over 40+ authors contributed to each book, totaling over 1.1 million donated words. 

We would love your support! It's for such a good cause. As of 4/5/22, 3266+ copies had been sold, for a total of $11,879 raised. That's amazing, and I cannot wait to see how much we raise over the next few months. 

If you'd like to check out these anthologies, I've included the universal links to Fierce Hearts and Adamant Spirits. Paperbacks will be available soon!

Thank you!

~ Charissa

Bloom Where Planted

 I took a walk through the neighborhood this morning, specifically through the parts of the development that are under construction. Lots of houses in various stages of construction. A ton of empty lots awaiting their turn. On those lots were wild flowers. 

Morning glory and patches of Large Flower Mexican Clover. (The little pale pink bell flowers.) There were Mexican Blanket flowers volunteering all over the vacant lots, as well as a little orange fire cracker-looking flower called Hairy Indigo. 

What does any of this have to do with marketing 'shoulds'? Just this: These flowers are growing in disturbed soil - soil that used to be a forest that was bulldozed to make way for houses. Tragic for the forest and everything that lived in it, yet from the wasteland of bare earth and weeds left behind, beauty arises.

Marketing is the wasteland. Hey. That's just how it feels to me. No hate if it's your happy place. It isn't mine. Not yet. It's foreign soil and my roots aren't buried very deep in it. But. I've found a few folks who've managed to break marketing down into bits and pieces that I can usually manage. And from there, I can do my best to connect with readers. 

Connecting with readers. That's the whole point, isn't it?ha

So marketing, to me, is about blooming where you're planted. To the extent that you can bloom. And make that public. One friend runs a marketing class that focuses only on how to engage on social media - no. Not necessarily authentically. You're playing a part - the part of the author who wrote that thing someone loved. So in no way should you be entirely yourself or let it all hang out. You're fishing for engagement. Likes. Interaction. Comments. On FB, for example, these interactions get your author page served to more and more people. Not all of your content on your author page has to be about books or the genre in which you write. The class posits a formula for personal shares versus genre or book related memes and posts - about 5 to 1. For every 5 bookish, genre, or related content you post seeking engagement, you can post a pet photo and encourage followers to post their pets in comments AND THEN GO LIKE AND COMMENT ON EVERY SINGLE ONE. 

Oh look. It's a lot like work. Work that I could be doing on a book. Dang. Still. If you want to grow an audience, engaging that audience is The Way (TM). See what the SFR author did there with the Madalorian nod? Yeah. 

Find a bare patch of marketing earth. Dig your roots in. See if you can't lure readers into responding to your posts, tweets, videos, or what have you. Bloom.

Marketing Ya Ought To: Post Regularly

Marketing: One "thing" I do (or ought to do) to expand my reader reach/awareness...

As part of team #YaOoughtTo, one thing I know I ought to do and spectacularly fail to do is to post to my socials with regularity. It's not that I don't check Twitter and FB multiple times a day, it's that I'm a lurker extraordinaire. 

However, if I want to build engagement, I need to ...engage. Funny how that works, eh? If I can create a reader expectation that new "content" will be available every Tues & Thurs, then slowly but surely those interested will know to check for said new content and their awareness of my existence doesn't fade away between book releases. 

Consistency, it's the same theory behind publishing monthly newsletters. It's all about creating reader expectations and delivering on them. (Yeah, I don't do monthly newsletters either, just new release newsletters.#YaOughtTo) 

In a Perfect World

 The notion this week is what's the one thing you do or should do to reach more readers.

I'd like to have an advertising budget. I mean a real one. Not even a big one, just, you know, enough to get seen in magazines occasionally, or even enough to ensure that my smalaler titles get Advanced Readers Copies out there. 

I've done it a few times, especially when I was just beginning. I had one publisher lament that he could not afford to do ARCS of my book because the budget wasn't there. After some small consideration of my finances (At the time I had a full-time job that paid decently well and was getting regular and rather lucrative work-for-hire gigs) I decided to take 1/2 my advance and get ARCs made for the book.

The reviews were excellent and the sales were solid enough to lead to SERENITY FALLS being picked up by one of the big five, as a trilogy. I made my money back several times over. 

I'd like to be able t budget for more of that. Meanwhile, my landlord is selling my rental house, I have to move in less than a month and I need to scrape up the first month's rent, last month's rent, security deposit and the cost for movers in the next 25 days. So, yeah, there goes that pipe dream. 

There are always things I'd LIKE to do. and then there's reality.

 Mostly I make mention of upcoming releases on Facebook

and Twitter.

Reaching Readers: Hashtag Your Heart Out

Hi all! This week's topic at the SFF Seven is Marketing: What's one thing you do (or know you should do) to expand your reach/reader awareness?

I feel like I could list so many things, but after some thought, I settled on one: Hashtags. 

As a visual person, Instagram quickly became my social media of choice for reaching readers. Also though, as a romantic fantasy author, that's where many of my readers and potential readers spend their social media time. Bookstagram is still a very active community.

One of the biggest things I've done to find potential readers on Instagram is incorporate hashtags. With regular posting, I've met book lovers who only found my account because they follow a hashtag I happened to use. Often, they tell me that they saw one of my posts, checked out my account, and went on to read my work. 

Another part of Instagram where hashtags can be used is in stories. I see so many authors using stories without connecting to a different audience other than their followers. Once I began incorporating a bookish hashtag in each story, my views went from roughly 24-40 per story to 150-250.

I also learned to do my best to maintain an active story stream with at least five hashtagged stories at any given time. This keeps authors and their work in their readers' minds. Given how many things authors compete with when it comes to vying for reader attention, stories are equivalent to free advertising. They also seem to reach different Instagrammers since some viewers are more likely to scroll through stories than the main feed. It's like a having a second demographic in which to market.

No matter which platform you prefer, I highly recommend learning where your community is, studying how to get your book and name in front of them, and then testing the method. With Insta, hashtags are the way to go because they're such an easy adjustment to make. It might take a bit of research to learn which ones are the most active and grant the most visibility, but it can be done. And trust me! You never know what tag might lead someone to your work, so don't be scared to hashtag everything you share!

So that's my tip! Now come find me on Insta and let's chat about books!

~ Charissa

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Smash All the Things

I don't know that I've ever consciously set out to smash patriarchy in my fiction. I'd rather smash everything I can reach - the definition of family. The definition of worthy and even of human. For that reason, most of  my focus has instead been on what I wish the world could be. Now don't get me wrong. I am no fan of the patriarchy and if I thought I could do it lasting, meaningful damage, I'd sign right up. But I'd rather write about a world where gender or lack thereof matters not in the least. Your limits are your own - not imposed by external forces. 

If there's any patriarchy smashing going on it's in the fact that so many women and nonbinary people of all colors are writing. We may be mocked and our stories made fun of, but we're encroaching on what used to be the purview of white guys and white guys only. Think it's old news? How long ago was it that science fiction was rocked by a bunch of cranky dudes complaining that we'd 'ruined' the genre (I think they said *their* genre) by bringing our perspectives and stories to it? When the women and nonbinary people of all colors started winning awards, the cranky dudes' tiny minds exploded. THAT'S real patriarchy smashing, right there. And I am utterly delighted by it.