To write for a living.
That’s the dream for most writers, isn’t it?
To sit around at home in your pyjamas all day, making stuff up for money.
Just enough money to pay the mortgage and put food in the fridge, you understand. No-one’s asking to retire to the Bahamas and live out their days polishing their BAFTAs and being fanned with palm fronds whilst drinking cocktails through curly straws.
Well, you might be. Personally, I quite like it here in my little house.
We all know that launching a career as a freelance writer is extremely difficult.
But putting aside the issue of being good enough, of learning the craft and developing the required skills to a professional standard, there are practical challenges to be faced that can sometimes be taken for granted.
In the beginning, you need the energy, motivation and discipline to be able to come home from work and sit back down to start work again. Writing scripts, or novels, that no-one’s asked for or even knows about.
Not only that, you need to invest time and energy in learning about the industry, networking, making contacts and persuading people to read the results of your hard work – whilst all the time, working on new ideas, developing new projects and writing new material.
And of course, rather than being paid to do any of these things, you have to be prepared to actually pay money – to travel to networking events and meetings, to subscribe to trade papers or online writer’s sites and, well, the volume of tea and biscuits invariably required per writing session doesn’t come cheap these days.
Christ, you have to really really want to do this job to put in the supreme effort it requires to get anywhere.
I guess that’s why so many writers hate the question “why do you want to be a writer?” Because there is no rhyme or reason to it. I can’t imagine anyone going to the lengths it takes or making the sacrifices required without that weird internal and inexpressible drive to do it.
But you do. You stay up late, sacrifice weekends and time with your friends and family, and sit at your computer until your eyes turn red.
Until, at some point, you’re rewarded. Things start taking off a bit. The ground shifts.
Maybe you get a few low paid commissions. Maybe you get a couple of bits and pieces into development.
Maybe you start having more meetings, pitching more ideas, working them up to go into commissioning rounds.
Then it gets really tough.
Suddenly, there’s so much to do – you could easily fill a 40 hour week with just your writing career – but you still can’t give up your day job because pitches and meetings are rarely paid, and even your commissioned work isn’t going to cover the mortgage.
Bearing in mind payment for writers is generally delivered half on signature of a contract and half on delivery, you might have been working on something for months by the time the contract is negotiated and finalised – and you might work on it for another six months before the final draft is delivered.
Then there are the agent’s fees, VAT on agent’s fees, income tax, national insurance contributions, pension contributions, student loan repayments, all those little things that chip away at what you get to actually keep.
John August said, in his excellent and highly recommended article Money 101 for Screenwriters, “you’re never so broke as when you first start making money”.
Never a truer word was spoken.
Because the fact of the matter is, in that awkward transition period from spec writer to commissioned writer, you may simply not have the time to spend 40 precious hours per week working for someone else.
The pressure is really on now. You’ve been paid to do something and you know you better damn well deliver the goods, on time, and to a high standard, or you might not get paid for anything else.
So what do you do?
Only you can decide. You might be the sole provider for your family. You might have large debts to consider. Your own personal circumstances will inevitably impact on the decision you make.
Maybe you reduce the hours you work at your day job. Maybe you switch jobs to something with more opportunity for shift work or flexi-time. Maybe you go the temping route so that if you need time off for a meeting or a last minute rewrite you can simply call in and say you’re not available. Either way, you’re likely to be earning less than you were in your stable full-time employment.
I’ve personally found freelance script reading work to be an enormous help. Not just because of the obvious opportunity it gives you to read lots of scripts, think about what makes them work, or not, and write endless one page synopses – but because it’s work that you can do outside of office hours as and when you can fit it in (usually late at night). Freelance script reading work meant that I could reduce my day job to three days a week, giving me four days in which to manage the rest of my workload – the reading, the writing and the meetings.
But the amount of time and effort required for a reading job is, in the beginning, fairly extreme in relation to the amount you can earn from it so you might not feel it’s the path for you.
There are other freelancing opportunities out there of course, I know several writers who have paved their way with teaching, journalism, copywriting or web design, for example. But to imagine you can step into this sort of work, which are careers in themselves, is insulting to the people who’ve worked as hard to get a foothold in those industries as you have to get a foothold into the screenwriting industry.
There’s no quick fix to ease the transition during this difficult and crucial time period. A period which might last several years.
Until one day, eventually, finally, your writing income overtakes your income from other sources and becomes the primary way you earn your living. What a feeling! What a happy, glorious day that is!
But even as the champagne cork pops, there’s no resting on any laurels to be had, because what about next year? And the year after that? There are no guarantees. Ever.
Before writing can become the only way you earn your living, you need to make sure you’ll have enough work coming in to keep you afloat for at least a year. And the only way to do that is to keep generating more work for the future.
It means that just when you think you’re working at maximum capacity, you have to find the next gear and make time and space for more. You have to chase every last opportunity like it’s the only one you’ve got, and do everything you can to deliver the best work you can in the time you have available. Because the more boomerangs you chuck out into the wilderness, the more likely it becomes that one will come back to you. And it might be the one you need to take you to that next level.
In the meantime, I guess the only answer, really, is good old fashioned graft. Screwing your courage, and your backside, to the sticking place – and bloody well getting on with it.
This is not a moan or a grumble. It’s a reality check.
As far as I’m concerned, writing is the best job in the world. Even at four in the morning when I’ve been working for eighteen hours straight, I can’t think of anything else I’d rather do. I thank my lucky stars for every single boomerang I catch on its way back.
And of course, the truth is, the more the work starts coming in, the better it gets. The more you enjoy what you’re doing and the less like graft it really feels.
But it’s not the life for everyone. If you’re not prepared to keep pushing yourself, keep moving things up a gear, you’re wasting your time.
This is the path of the freelancer. It’s the path you chose.
Roll up your sleeves.
