Pension benefits are better when one works a regular job, I suppose
Larry Send a noteboard - 11/07/2011 11:24:20 AM
Novelist Steph Swainston, the writer of the Castle series of New Weird fantasies, has announced she's leaving writing. She blames the pressures of delivering a novel a year and being expected to do a lot of her own marketing via the Internet. She also blames the 'poison' of some Internet feedback to her writing online. Apparently she is planning to become a chemistry teacher.
Sad news. I enjoyed the interesting-but-flawed Year of Our War. I need to get round to reading the rest of her books sometime.
Sad news. I enjoyed the interesting-but-flawed Year of Our War. I need to get round to reading the rest of her books sometime.
I suspect that might be as much behind this as anything else. From anecdotal evidence that I've gathered from talking with a few authors over the years, it does take writing close to a novel a year (plus often other projects) to make the same amount of income as a lower-middle class worker (like a teacher, alas), or roughly $35K-50K/year. But that does not include having to deduct income tax or paying for a larger health premium (in the US), so it becomes for most authors having to work 60-80 hours/week to approximate the money earned by most working 40 hours/week.
That is much more stressful, I'd imagine, than what I've endured over the years teaching 11-18 year-olds, most of them special needs/services children. More power to her if she enjoys teaching and finds the spare time to continue writing. After all, most authors don't get to quit their day jobs.
Illusions fall like the husk of a fruit, one after another, and the fruit is experience. - Narrator, Sylvie
Je suis méchant.
Je suis méchant.
Steph Swainston to quit writing to become a teacher
- 10/07/2011 12:05:38 PM
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Oh dear. Someone has been listening to trolls?
- 10/07/2011 12:51:51 PM
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It must be such a different world for writers from even two years ago.
- 10/07/2011 01:12:45 PM
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Pension benefits are better when one works a regular job, I suppose
- 11/07/2011 11:24:20 AM
678 Views