Why do people who initially support our writer dreams turn on that idea and almost encourage us to give up? I have been a writer for a long time now and had some success getting my work in good and impressive publications. However, I've hit a dry spell. I haven't been published since last fall. This is hard enough on a so-called working writer. Then my lover tells me maybe I should get a part time job or something, not for the money but for a better use of my time. This really sucks to hear. And I don't believe my lover would have ever said anything like this a year ago. I have a novel in the works, but I haven't been giving it the proper time it deserves. I'm mostly working on short stories and essays since that's what I sell to the magazines and journals. I can't help thinking that if I had a book deal, my lover would be more supportive. But, right now, I don't have anything. Well, I have dozens of things on submission, but, like I said, I'm sort of in this dry spell. Are the people in your life supportive of your writing? Have you ever had anyone stop being supportive after a while? Why do people lose faith in our abilities and potential to rock this writing and publishing world?
i never used to tell people about my writing. HOWEVER, when I wanted to be an English major and do a dual program where I can get my MFA at the same time, my parents werent really supportive of that. they werent really supportive of the whole "English Literature" major either, because they said i'd be limited in the career path i could choose. i could either be an english teacher (hard pass) or a lawyer (heeeeeellz nah), bur "writer" wasnt an option. But then whenever something of mine was published, they'd always cheer and pass it around to friends and family bragging that I was "their writer".... They were like that with my brother, too. He has a BA in Music and always wanted to be a performer. after college, he didnt want to do anything but perform. my parents kind of forced him to get a "real job" and he started working in a department store stock room (he loathed that job). he found a job part time teaching music at a local music shop, and then would go around to clubs and perform open mic. he would go away to musicians retreats in New York to meat people. eventually, enough people heard him play and started asking for business cards. Now, whenever a band needs a woodwind musician, they call him. he now has gigs almost every week with different bands. he even got to go to Jamaica for the first time because the band that needed him was playing at a wedding on the beach. Now my parents are super proud of him and try to go to any performance he has near by (he's featured on a few songs in 3 albums, too and I shared one of them in the Music thread a while back). The way my parents see it... college is an investment. they put in the money to send us to college, and they expect that one day we'd make enough to pay them back. no job/career=no money= poor investment (my dad used to say that about my brother all the time... that he was a poor investment because he's "waiting around for opportunities and not doing anything with his life). It sounds really harsh.... and it was frustrating, and super upsetting to see my brother so beaten down trying to survive off of his craft. Its still not his full time job, but he's in a place now that allows him to continue performing when he's needed and he's happy with that. The way I see it, i wont quit my day job until I make enough off of my writing to survive.
So I can't answer the first two questions is because I haven't told anyone of my writing, but my guesses on why people lose faith is : 1) the lack of steadily and reproducible quantitative/qualitative results. A lot of people measure success by money, popularity or identifiable progress. If you're in a part-time job, you can see the money go up in your bank account. If you're working marketing, you can measure your success in social media following. If you're building a deck, you can visibly the see the deck being built. But if you're in a creative field like writing, in the beginning you can only produce words and more words. Sure, if you're starting out, you can measure by word count or times published, but for those not in the writing field, those are just words. Most people don't know if they're marketable words, or if there's some key word count that needs to be reached to make it successful, or whether it can make a steady and reliable income. Makes it very hard to put faith in something so esoteric. 2) the lack of understanding for the writing field as a whole. Writing in movies is often portrayed as a mythical process in which people stare at screens all day and are tortured. There's writer's block, there's the "starving artist" stereotype, etc. A lot of people take these stereotypes to be true to heart. Lack of understanding of writing turns to lack of respect for writing, IMO. 3) the lack of success stories Everyone says they want to be a writer/other creative but only a small amount of people ever become a good enough writer for the common person to recognize. That usually instills doubt in people, especially if they've met a lot of creative types that ended up giving up on their creative field for a 9 to 5 job. 4) Constantly flunking deadlines Kind of filed under 'creative types that ended up giving up on their creative field for a 9 to 5 job', I've met a lot of people (myself included) who said they'd write a book and hope to have it by published by X and then X date passes and they say "it didn't work out." Do that too many times and people are just gonna lose faith in you as they would any other profession, creative or otherwise. 5) External factors Maybe someone told the other person something bad about your writing or the writing field in general. Maybe the people around you are assigned overtime and are jealous you're at home writing. Maybe the economy's shit and the extra income is really needed which the writing isn't currently providing. People lose faith for a number of reasons, I guess.
So long as I made my own money to pay for rent, bills, food, and the like. My wife would leave me in a second if I couldn't contribute while she works full time. And I probably would too (within reason) if the roles were reversed. I don't know anything about anyone else's situation, but so long as you can pay your own nut, nobody can say jack about how you earn (or don't) a living. But if you're mooching--and I'm not saying anyone is--to eat, well, that's a different story.
Hang on, if you don't have a job and haven't published anything in a year, how have you been eating and paying rent? Not to pry but you asked the question.
I don't really tell the people in my life about it, so they don't have a chance to be supportive either way. Pretense messes me up. The small exception is the missus: I tell her when something is done (it's top secret until the finish line), and she's allowed to read it if she wants too, but frankly she's too busy with 55+ hr weeks and that's fine by me. My only real concern was that she would start to think I was cheating, what with hastily-closed browsers and sudden deaths of keystrokes.
Long story and not one to share on here, but money has nothing to do with my lover's new opinion that maybe I should find something else to do with my time. I was just wondering how other people dealt with lack of support from loved ones, especially if the support used to be there, but now it's gone.
I write on top of a full time job . Mrs moose is supportive but she wouldn’t support me jacking the day job unless I was making the same or more from writing even if we didn’t need the money I tend to think she’d want me to do something worthwhile… a lover caring that you use your time productively is not a lack of support. An unsupportive partner doesn’t care at all
I once joked around and asked my husband if i could be a stay at home wife and finish my novel. He laughed and said "you can be a 'stay at home wife' somewhere else!" Didnt see it as unsupportive. Just understandable. If you are expected to pull the same financial weight as your S.O. it would be kind of selfish to stop doing your part. But you'd mentioned that it wasnt a financial reason that you lost your livers support. So its a tough one Finances is one of 2 reasons i can think of for a loved one to not be supportive. The other is is your loved one sees your craft as something thats hurting you. You've been depressed a couple of times on here and have shared a bit of your sadness. You are a reserved person on here so i can only imagine that you must share a lot more with your partner. I know i wouldnt be so supportive of something that continuously hurts my loved one.
That's hard, rats, and I am sorry you are feeling so bad about this. Having someone opine that a part time job would be a better use of one's time stings, and it's a shame to be smacked with such a criticism when one is already feeling discouraged. After my then-day job became the source of three to four migraines a week, my husband agreed that I could take time off to see if I could survive financially as a full time writer. A year and a half into the endeavor, I concluded that while I could support my end of the bills with full time writing, there were several serious drawbacks. I found a part-time day job, incorporated my nature writing into a quarterly wildlife newsletter, and got the museum to print it. Best of both worlds: I write what I like, get paid an hourly wage for it, and someone else pays publishing and postage costs. Eventually, I collected three other part time jobs as well, all of which involve writing to some degree. I still manage to play in the fiction sandbox and sell the occasional nonfiction article here and there. By the way, I'm not suggesting you follow my path; I'm just sharing experience, and my experience is that I'm happier not focusing all my energy and feelings of self-worth on my success as a freelancer.
I have been having a hard year. It doesn't have anything to do with writing, just life stuff that really sucks. My lover and I aren't in a place where we share finances or even technically live together (but we kind of do, but not really). However, this is not something I see really working out, but for now it's okay. My ex used to read everything I wrote. My current lover doesn't really have that interest, and that's fine. But I don't think my lover really understands what I'm doing or trying to do. I don't know. Maybe I don't either.
I have/had a part time writing gig, but I'm taking a break from that for now. I have an understanding with my boss so it's okay. I guess I'm just in a low place in life right now, and when I heard this I was surprised. After a while I asked my lover what kind of job I should do. My lover said it wasn't really about me getting a job, which is what I suspected.
This one bothers me. I'm a firm believer in the idea that if what you do entertains you, it's a worthwhile use of your time.* I got very lucky with my girlfriend, who, before I tried my hand at writing, accepted that videogames entertained me. If I wanted to pour all my time into GTA, I could. The caveat here, provided I'm using that word correctly, is that I carry my own weight. I have a dayjob, I pay my share, I help around the house (the bare bloody minimum, admittedly), so I can fill my time however the hell I want to. If I don't want to work anymore, I can quit my job. But only if I can support myself. It becomes a problem when your partner is dragged into supporting whatever your passion is. Then, I believe, they're well within their rights to tell you to "get a job, hippie!" *Unless you are entertained by burning crosses or starting wars or something. In that case your partner should walk away and never look back.
