![[Logo]](/images/101ReasonsLogo.png "101 Reasons to Stop Writing")
Paul Riddell is coming up on five years since he quit writing on a professional basis, and celebrates that he can actually save money since doing so. He claims essays written for 101 Reasons aren’t relapses: he refers to them as “shitting in the well” should someone have otherwise considered asking him to return. As if that was going to happen anyway.
Here at 101 Reasons To Stop Writing, we can never come up with too many answers to the question “Why should I stop?” Lots of other authorities will argue the ethical (”Think of the children”), moral (”Your fanfic makes Baby Elvis cry”), and social (”Your stories make me pray for a global extinction event”) merits for shutting down the computer, and stepping away, but nobody ever talks about the economic merits of quitting.
“One business report after another makes much hay out of how smoking costs $X million in lost hours every year in the US, but nobody takes the time to research how many man-hours are lost every year to wannabe writers.”
Back when I was a kid, any effort in the US to get people to conserve, recycle, or otherwise stop wasting couldn’t be put into social or ethical terms, mostly because too many hippies had poisoned that well a decade earlier. In order to make aluminum recycling effective, instead of murmuring “Well, like, you save lots of energy otherwise used for aluminum refining by recycling your old beer cans, you know?”, the effective method to get recycling proponents was to offer cash incentives for those cans. I made quite a bit of money in my early adolescence by cashing in on typical Texans’ capacity for crap beer and inability to clean up after themselves.
Likewise, I didn’t need to be shown lots and lots of pictures of cancerous lungs and nicotine-stained teeth to convince me that smoking was bad: all I needed to do was observe that my friends who smoke (or drank, or both) never had any money for anything else because they were smoking their disposable income. The biggest revelation I ever had was the realization that I’d have saved money by switching writing for black tar heroin - and then quitting heroin. The question isn’t “Can I afford to become a full-time writer?” It’s “Can I afford not to quit?”
First, let’s discount the costs of the “writer’s lifestyle” and the idea that absorbing enough nicotine, alcohol, and THC to scare the shit out of Hunter S. Thompson somehow opens the gateways of creativity, and take a look at actual income. One business report after another makes much hay out of how smoking costs $X million in lost hours every year in the US, but nobody takes the time to research how many man-hours are lost every year to wannabe writers.
If you haven’t succumbed, you know the friend or family member who has: “I’m calling in sick so I can finish that article or story.” When they’re at work, they’re whining about how the story ideas are coming out faster than they can scribble them down, but when they’re at home, the ideas just evaporate away and that day is wasted on surfing porn or playing with the cat. Combine that lost time with the threats of disciplinary action when the wannabe gets caught writing at work, the lost income from too many absences, and the drain on national unemployment insurance when the now “liberated” darlings decide to spend the next six months pretending to work on that novel instead of trying to find gainful employment, and having a workforce full of smokers suddenly doesn’t sound so bad.
“Look at the number of really bad books you bought that were written by friends or people who smiled at you at a book signing and ask yourself how much you’d save if you didn’t succumb to the guilt.”
I won’t even start on the shitheads who work contract positions, call in “sick” at least one day a week to work on projects with a ridiculously low return on their energy investments, and then figure “Well, I’ll just hit up everyone on my blog to send me money via PayPal to cover rent.” [There goes that idea - Ed.]
Secondly, let’s look at overhead. Lots of wannabes listen to the advice given by established writers about “reading everything you can and then read some more,” but they’re doing it for all of the wrong reasons. Are they buying that science fiction magazine because they’re interested in the subject matter or because they’re a fan of one of the authors therein? Hell, no: they’re buying it for a submission address or because an author they hate is published therein. You’d be amazed at how many book and magazine sales for mediocre or flat-out bad writers are due to jealousy from even worse wannabes who look forward to snubbing that mediocre writer at awards ceremonies or at the mall.
Are they buying novels because they want to learn from the craft? Nope: they’re seeing what the publishing house is buying in the hope of selling something just like the current editor’s flavor of the month, or to smirk about the editor’s obvious lack of taste before returning to their own bad Tolkien/Howard/Moorcock ripoff. Put another way, if anyone finds a purchaser of a Robert Jordan novel who doesn’t have delusions of being a writer some day, have that purchaser stuffed and mounted as an obvious freak of nature. In a slightly different revenue drain, look at the number of really bad books you bought that were written by friends or people who smiled at you at a book signing and ask yourself how much you’d save if you didn’t succumb to the guilt.
“Even Christmas and birthdays figure in: as soon as you quit, a lot of writer and editor “friends” suddenly have no reason to associate with you, so your gift and Christmas card expenditures get cut in half or more.”
Let’s also go after “research costs”. Besides the books and magazines, let’s cut out the really shitty movies and TV programs you feel obligated to watch because an editor might call you up for an article on them. Do the same for trips to the comic shop. Cut out the trips to the toy store for more tsochkes for your writing desk. Suddenly free up a few hundred dollars a month in disposable income, not counting switching to bare-bones basic cable or turning off the cable entirely? Good for you: you’re catching on.
Also in overhead, let’s cut out the other costs:
Even Christmas and birthdays figure in: as soon as you quit, a lot of writer and editor “friends” suddenly have no reason to associate with you, so your gift and Christmas card expenditures get cut in half or more. Oh, and only the sort of dweeb whose entire self-esteem revolves around being a member of the Science Fiction Writers of America or the Horror Writers of America would waste money on membership in the first place, so why continue to pay dues when sanity intervenes and you quit writing?
“Cut out the writing, and you cut out the shame and humiliation as well as the financial hemorrhage.”
Then there’s conventions. To hear the writers and wannabes who plead poverty because they have to hit six or seven writer’s conferences or conventions a year, you’d almost feel sorry for them if they were actually getting some possible return for their time and money in the far future. However they may have started, and no matter the genre being covered, conventions for writers exist for one and only one reason: to get free stuff from others while trying to convince them to pay for yours.
The con staff expects due obeisance for deigning to set up a convention in a fleabag hotel in the industry’s slow periods (holding a convention in the middle of August in central Texas, for instance, because “the hotel’s a little cheaper” a week before students return to college than a month later), with the nearest restaurant serving anything edible at least ten kilometers away. The big writers show up to demand homage while getting freebies from lesser lights who hope to ride some coattails. The fans show up to demand deep discounts in the dealer’s room and try to wheedle books or magazines from the guests “for meeeeeee?” when they aren’t demanding guest badges because “I’m a pro writer! I wrote for a Beauty and the Beast fanzine back in 1989!”
The only reason editors show up is because a convention environment is the only place where they can stomp into the middle of a discussion and bray “You, of course, know who I am, don’t you?” without getting stomped, and only at a con can an allegedly professional editor intone in public “You know, I refer to my penis as ‘Mel Gibson’” and get bits of nervous laughter instead of howls of “YOU MEAN ‘MEL BROOKS, YOU BLOATED SACK OF SHIT!”
The costs of plane fare and plane rental, hotel space, and subsequent decontamination and delousing after the con’s over, not to mention the cost of antidepressants and counseling after you realize “My good Elvis, I actually want to associate with these people?”, versus an occasional bag of remainders and advertising tossed to you for attending if the con staff deigns to do so: cut out the writing, and you cut out the shame and humiliation as well as the financial hemorrhage.
Another benefit to quitting the conventions involves Significant Others and their expenses. If your SO has no interest in your particular writing specialty, they’ll expect to come along with you to the convention, but they’ll also expect extra funds to distract themselves while you’re looking for a train station toilet to lick clean to get the taste from your mouth after kissing that editor’s ass. If your SO is in the Industry, then you can say “Fine, but you’re using your money while I stay home and do laundry. I want to accomplish something of import this weekend.”
Best of all, if you were unfortunate enough to get involved with an egomaniac who goes into full “rock-star wife” mode and throws temper tantrums every time s/he doesn’t get preferential treatment because s/he’s married to “one of the STARS!”, then quitting writing not only spares you yet another weekend of crying jags and screaming matches because s/he didn’t get a super-special discount in the dealer’s room, but your very own Nancy Spungen or Kevin Federline will probably pack up and leave for good, or at least not press the issue of reconciliation if the divorce is in process. After all, why would they want to hang around with someone who isn’t on his/her way to “being famous”, even by the pathetic standards of science fiction literature?
Let’s take a final look. Tally all the money you spent on upgrading your computer or buying a new one, not to mention recording media, printer ink, and new peripherals that you “need”. Don’t forget the added expenses of “needing your own writing office” or other special areas for mainlining those creative juices. Add the money you spent on “research material” and medical bills from shooting up that “research material”. Toss on “promotional costs”, as well as the time and money spent on arguing with tax agents and bankruptcy court judges, and then subtract the actual money you made from writing in the last five years.
Considering the odds against you of actually becoming a successful full-time writer, wouldn’t it be easier, cheaper, and more productive to take the money you’re burning on this dubious career and roll it into lottery tickets?