R.S. Benedict
Welcome to Rite Gud, the podcast that helps you write good. In this podcast, we tend to focus on the craft of writing, handling, character, setting theme, and so on. But there’s another side to writing the business side, we acknowledge it, but don’t talk about it a lot on this podcast, mostly because to be perfectly honest, I’m not very good at it. I make very little money doing this. I have a day job for a reason. I am terrible at the self promotion, writing hustle. And I think it would be a little irresponsible and dishonest of me to offer advice in something that I’m genuinely bad at. But the grind set is real and inescapable If you ever plan to write for money, and it’s foolish to ignore it. So here to talk about it in this episode is horror author Kyle Winkler, thanks for coming on. Kyle.
Kyle Winkler
Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
R.S. Benedict
So why don’t we talk a little bit about what we mean by the hustle or the grind set when it comes to writing then talk a little bit about the state of things. For a writer, or an artist, the state of things, financially for a contemporary writer is not great.
Kyle Winkler
No, it’s not great.
R.S. Benedict
It’s never been great. But it’s never been great.
Kyle Winkler
I mean, great. It’s never been. I was I’ve been thinking about a lot of these questions prior to coming on to the show. And one of the things I was thinking about was like, I mean, the hustle has always been with us to some degree. Right? Right. So without being like, to historical bad, and I mean, you had to get to find a patron, you know, hundreds of years ago, if you couldn’t find a patron, you were, you know, you were fucked. Right? Or you could just you could keep writing, but was like, what was the point? If you weren’t gonna get a little, you know, if you’re gonna get some shackles, tossed your way. And then I’m jumping over a lot of history to the Pope’s, you know, God talk about hustle like, you know, I’ve been reading a lot of Clark Ashton Smith lately, he was one of the big three weird tales writers, Robert E. Howard, and Lovecraft were the other two. And of course, all of these guys were like, riding their asses off to try to get money, you know, specifically, Smith, because he was taking care of two older dying parents. And he really only wrote very heavily for about a five year period, like right after the depression until the mid 30s. You know, for like, what, how many? How many sets a word one, one and a half cents a word? Maybe? I mean, so. I see that as hostile to. And there’s a negative and a positive to that, too. Right. And I’m sure we’ll get into that. But now it’s never been, it’s never been good. I’m trying to think that there’s with the people who get paid for writing whoever writes the shitty commercials that we see on TV, you know, pawns. Whoever came up with the pawn for the soda that you see between, you know, episodes of cops or lawn order, or whatever, that person might make a little money, but maybe not. Maybe not even them. I don’t know, I’ve never, I’ve never written for marketing. But the state of things for the writer and the artist is is grim unless you know you like what one of five people you know, I should say, right? Probably people might be like, Who is this guy? Why is he here? Why is what’s you have to say about this? And one of the things that I was thinking about was like, Well, how do how would I? Yeah, how do I answer that question is outside of I teach writing for a living? I’m an English professor, right? But that’s a very different type of thing. From what a lot of people who are listening to this podcast, right. So in some degree, I kind of have to put that aside, because that doesn’t really count. That’s how I actually make a living as I teach, research, writing and whatever. The assignment that I teach that students don’t like, all the typical stuff, right, but, but, um, outside of that, you know, it’s like, I remember thinking, how, how am I going to make money? How am I going to do stuff? You know, how am I gonna be able to pay for something that we want to do if I don’t have the money? We’re a one income family. You know, one of the things I’m maybe jumping around a little bit is like you had mentioned that, like, people don’t want to talk about this. They don’t want to talk about money with regard to with with regard to writing, right? And in Why might that be? Why is it that most people don’t want to talk about it? What is the what’s the unwillingness to want to admit to that
R.S. Benedict
we’re talking about that I’m I’m not sure what it is about it but but for, just to give a little note about some of the financial realities of it, pay rates for short fiction, if adjusted for inflation are a lot lower than the back in the old pulp days in the early in the early days of amazing stories, and weird tales. Now these were pulp magazines, these were kind of bottom of the barrel ones that had trouble attracting writer good writers because they could only pay one penny a word. And this is nice, the 1920s I just looked it up. But paying one penny a word in 1926 is about paying 17 cents a word today,
Kyle Winkler
Holy cats.
R.S. Benedict
I’ve never gotten paid 17 cents a word for writing short fiction in sci fi fantasy.
Kyle Winkler
What is the highest pro market rate going right now? Like, is it around? 12?
R.S. Benedict
Yes, usually around like 12 cents is pretty is one of the better ones.
Kyle Winkler
But I don’t even know who that is.
R.S. Benedict
I think they do more than that. I think they were doing 10 Okay, and they’ve increased.
Kyle Winkler
I always tell my students how much I make, like in the first week, and then they all look at me like why are you here? And I’m like, well, that’s a good question. See, this is
R.S. Benedict
science fiction pays eight to 10 cents per word for short stories of Oh 500 words and eight cents for each word over 7500 I believe by the SF wa eight cents is the current pro rate. Yeah, like the minimum is four years less than that you’re considered a semi pro, which is what if your accents a word so. So again, like bottom of the barrel, cheap, shitty Pope’s in 1926 were paying the equivalent of 17 cents a word. And are also going to point out there were more of them that were way more Yes, because that’s another side writing short sci fi fantasy. There’s not a lot of publications where you can submit to compare to how many there were in like the 1930s in the 1940s. And also there is a was a really wide variety of different types of Pulp Fiction magazines, too. You didn’t just have sci fi fantasy, you didn’t just have horror, what was called weird tales back then you there were also a lot of like Western magazines, romance magazines, Detective, you know, men stories were like men’s adventure magazines, and so on and so forth. So a lot of writers, a lot of pulp writers could make a living, banging out short stories a few every month, you’d have to do a few every month, and you’d have to bang them out real fast that you couldn’t just like, goof off, but you could make a living on it. And that’s just not really realistic today, and I want to stress that I’m not like blaming publishers for this. Like, I think that the magazine publishers are like rubbing their hands together going like, Oh, I’m hoarding No, it’s never I’m making so much money on this and I’m hoarding it all like, I know that’s not happening. I know, you know, people don’t it’s
Kyle Winkler
never been Yeah. Right. Like, if you read the history of exact for example, weird tales, right? Like that. Publication started being priced way too high. Right. I think it’s grits its soul, it’s an issue that sold the most was its first and then just went down from there. It’s constantly in, in trouble, or in close to failing and going out of print. And this doesn’t seem like it’s not unusual when we have now which didn’t have them were Kickstarters you know, like that’s kind of how I see a lot of things staying alive. This the NPR mark, right, like you like what we do, you know, kick us a couple of bucks. And we’ll make sure that we keep doing the stuff that you like keep the lights on and you know, pay the people in you know, peanuts and and scraps so they can keep cranking out the mimeograph machine. Right. So, but it’s we have we can’t blame so it’s like, the thing is is like they keep popping up and I like that sort of like said Jeff Goldbloom Ian Malcolm, you know, Life finds a way thing from Jurassic Park, right? These these these magazines, these journals, these publications, they want to keep going and I’m thinking here of Yes, quote unquote, literary fiction, but also genre Max, right. Like, like weird tales won’t die. Every time it kind of disappears, it keeps coming back or, you know, what with amazing stories Wasn’t it just came back after being gone for a while. So somebody was started republishing it a little while. Yeah. And it’s, you know, those are that’s great that people want to do that, and I constantly find more and new publications online through Twitter. BIOS or blue sky bios, or just kind of, like, from hearing stuff from other people, like, you know, oh, this I submitted here and like, I’ve never heard of that before, you know, but they pay like one cent per word. It’s like, Wow, it’s amazing. I mean, even one cent is like, great, because, you know, prior to learning about pro markets, you know, 12 years ago, I was sending everything to literary magazines, because that’s what that’s what you were sort of taught to do. I went to, was a creative writing major, and then got into an MFA program, and how they sort of what they tell you, you know, it’s like, okay, well, when you write your stories, you send them off to here, here, here. Yeah. And those a you and contributors got,
R.S. Benedict
yeah, it’s really typical. That’s on the Harry typical for magazines, not to pay anything to not do. And even on top of it, a lot of literary magazines, charge submission fees, which is like, what that’s nowadays,
Kyle Winkler
many, many, many years ago, which doesn’t seem like many years ago, it’s probably anybody who’s listening. But back in like to that and early 2000s. You know, that was sort of unheard of. So far as I can tell, like, I had never paid anything to submit anything anywhere. And so it’s so odd to me now, or to see on the way out the door, they’ll say things like, if you want a really extensive personal annotation of your story, you know, an editorial critique of your story, you could pay 55 bucks or something? I’m making that number up. I don’t know. But it’s enough for me to like, I would have never wanted to do it anyway. But anybody who was a beginning writer, who might be lured into that, right, my, that’s, I put this under the negative. So I think that should is permission. Yeah, you know, I think telling people like, Hey, you can sell them will reject, you will still actually get seven times more than money that you would have to pay just to submit, or maybe even the amount of money we would have paid you if your store was accepted. You know, because I can only think of like on maybe one hand the amount of places that actually pay quite a bit of money for, for a literary story. Maybe two hands, so at this point, but they’re not a lot. And they don’t have what they don’t have NSFW. They don’t have you know, any other. You could open up, you know, Benedict weekly, and be like, this week, I’m paying you five bucks. And then next week, you pay me
R.S. Benedict
10 bucks to submit I pay contributors $5. Right.
Kyle Winkler
Right. Yeah. So it’s kind of all over the place. It’s the state of things is always grim. And I wish it wasn’t. But
R.S. Benedict
that’s I don’t feel good about places that church submission fees. I don’t I refuse to send anything to those but, but in terms of like paying poorly, or not paying much, I really want to stress again, that I’m not like blaming editors for this, I understand that you’re not making money off of this either. People don’t pay for fiction magazines, the way they used to where fiction, short fiction is competing with a lot of forms of entertainment that didn’t exist back then. They didn’t have video games and cell phones and you know, everything that we have now. So if you’re trying to write a short fiction magazine, you are competing with this gigantic glut of free content. And very, very, very accessible, like, very carefully designed to distract you like a Skinner box forms of entertainment, that’s portable and easy. So, of course, it’s just not going to make as much money because there’s more competition, and the competition is very attractive, it is very easy and brain melting to play Candy Crush Saga, compared to like attempting to read a story or something. So
Kyle Winkler
the most dangerous thing in the last two years in my life has got to have been reels being more popular. Like, it’s so easy to lose an hour of your life to this sort of like reading. But I mean, I’m sitting at a table that is like, probably a lot of other people were listening this like stacked with books, and in my basement has bookshelves in the my bookshelves upstairs, like I read a lot, you know, and I still am liable. I’m still like, sucked into this. So, you know, I understand that I get why people wouldn’t. And again, you know, I teach young kids, I teach teenagers and people in their early 20s. And so, you know, and I have to have them read things. I want them to read things in my class, right? So when we want to read something, whether it’s a poem or short story, or an essay, or an excerpt of something, you know, anything they are, many of them are just incredibly resistant, because it’s not something that they’re used to doing. You know, I often ask them, you know, have you ever read a poem in school in high school, and many of them don’t. And I live in Northeast Ohio, and I teach in this part of the state. So it’s like, you know, pretty it’s not in the middle of nowhere, you know, and I think it’s, it can be used as an example for a lot of places all over the country. And, and also they’re not writing a lot either, you know, many students only write maybe three pages, or maybe a little bit more in high school, I remember at least writing a page paper that hadn’t be 15. Yes, you know, and I was I went to high school in the 90s, though, so that was many, many years ago. But the point here is like, these are the people who you would normally want to get to read the types of things that we’re doing, right, it’s reading the stories, you want them to read them. And instead, of course, they’re gonna want to play, you know, like, Mike, you know, they want to be on a switch, they want to be on an Xbox, they want to, they want to be doing something that’s more interactive with them. But one of the questions I had for us, I guess, was something like, why is it that there is this hustle in writing? When it seems like so many people don’t care about the writing or the reading? Where’s the this desire to for those who are trapped in it? Or want to put out this hustle, right? Like, where’s that? Where’s the lower for wanting to be a writer? Because it’s never made money? If the if they’ve been paying attention, like the odds of you becoming a Stephen King, or JK Rowling or Daniel Steele, or whatever, are so astronomical, it’s like, forget about it. So is this just like, are we idiots? What is it? That’s, you know, why is this still going on?
R.S. Benedict
I kind of wonder. I mean, even though rationally, we all know the chances of even being able to quit your day job and right full time is very, that’s a very low chance. I’m wondering if, in the internet age, instead of competing for that we’re competing almost for like Cloud? Because because people will do incredibly stupid things just for Internet attention just for likes and subscribes, even if they’re not monetizing it. And it almost feels like a little bit like that, like, oh, oh, I won this award, I won this. I want to I want to Hugo, what can you do with it? Like, I don’t know. There it is, though. I got it.
Kyle Winkler
What can you do with it, you can put it on the cover of your book that comes out? Yeah, you can pull that will sell three other copies. Cloud, I think was a lot of investment in the Coliseum. So what I used to say, and for people who don’t know what that is, it’s it’s that page in the book that tells you where everything came from the date and all that stuff, right. And this is a work of fiction, but it also can be used to describe the little icon on the spine. Sometimes, you know, like the little boy dog or the the tour mountain or, you know, the whatever your little thing is that you want that you grew up looking at. You’re like, oh, I want that. Right. And if you don’t have that you’re not quote unquote, real, you haven’t, quote, made it. And that’s what I did for a long time. You know, and then you feel like, you do the math, right? I just saw this online today. Actually, they were like 2%, sometimes even less of the people who submit to these prorate markets are getting ranged. That’s just the people we’re getting published. Right? And you have to imagine that, like, how many of the people are writing, you know, to try to get there to get their words into this thing? So there’s got to be something about it. They want to be do you want Neil Clark to like you? You want, you know, Wendy Wagner, like you you want when CeCe Finley was the Charlie was the editor of FMS, I wanted him to like me, you know, I didn’t even care. He could have been like, I liked the story. I’m keeping it for myself, and I’m paying you but I’m not publishing it. Yes. validation. And maybe that’s what it is. Maybe it’s just validation. You know, you really we’re all just desperately wanting some a lot of mommy or daddy to tell us that.
R.S. Benedict
And there’s still a little bit of money to be made out of it. But But better to be thought of as like a hobby that sometimes pays you and not necessarily a sensible career path. And I don’t want to say that it’s impossible to make a living off of writing. I mean, it’s not impossible. It’s just I think
Kyle Winkler
it’s very downward. I think it’s accidental now. People who make a living off of that do it accidentally, right, like, Andy Weir posts the Martian online for yucks, while he’s working at a software developer or something, right, and then when it takes off, it gets published and makes much money he still doesn’t quit his job though. Like he didn’t quit a job for a while, which is a smart move. Yeah, right. Until he knew I think like when he’s not stupid, right, like, Okay, well, I financially he did the math. He’s like, okay, now I can quit my job. Okay, but like, that doesn’t I don’t I don’t think that happens. I used to joke around with my students say that the last person who can this is not true, but the last person who could make a living off of the writing was F Scott Fitzgerald. When he would sell a story to the Saturday Evening Post and making like $1,500 which was just fucking bananas amount of money back then. And you know, then you can like fuck off to Paris was able to get ripped on, you know, martinis of a thing or whatever. And that that doesn’t exist you know, it doesn’t exist anymore I can. I know we keep saying this but like the making a living part of writing is just so incredibly tough that the hustle of that is say having a full time job and having to carve that time out for writing. Right you have a full time job I have a full time job. Right? Most of the people I know who write have full time jobs? I don’t know. Yeah. I don’t know. The only people I know who still write and are published authors that don’t have a full time job are not retired just because they’ve retired from that job. So that’s why that’s why they were
R.S. Benedict
I know of a couple others but they’re all supported financially by a spouse or their parents or something else like
Kyle Winkler
there’s some some other element there that’s keeping these people afloat and that great. Oh my god, are you kidding me? Like if I happen, that sounds pretty fell backwards into like, if
R.S. Benedict
I could go on money and arrange some rich person who lets me write all day, that’d be cool. And then perhaps then perhaps murder him like in an episode of Colombo, and like were very beautiful gold kaftan while telling us a small swarthy rumbled Italian man, I can’t I couldn’t dream of anyone who’d want to hurt my darling husband, Lieutenant. Daphne
Kyle Winkler
du Maurier a novel for sure. Oh, yeah. So let’s let’s move into this is one of the ways that people who have a full time job who who write, teach writing, and that is teaching creative writing, right? So they’ll teach in a workshop, or they will teach a class or, I mean, and I said this, when we were talking, I was like, I’m gonna be teaching a class, like in two days about horror. So like, I don’t want to seem like I am on that. I’m not attached to this, right. But it’s like, what when I if I get approached, and I like what it is, and it’s something I feel like I can tribute. And I’ll do it, right. And there are so many. There’s so many of these things. I just, I don’t know, I can’t
R.S. Benedict
really there’s a lot, a little workshop, a little writing workshops, there’s so so so many. And it kind of feels like the way to make it as financially as a writer. It’s not to sell your writing, but it’s to sell yourself as a writing influencer and charge for workshops. Yeah, and I don’t want to diss anyone who goes to workshops or who gives workshops, they can be very, very helpful. Yeah. And I’ve gotten to them too, and they can be great and respect to people who are good at it. But there is very much this. Okay, I’ve gotten published. Let me charge people to go to to go to the secrets made for the secrets, let me teach you how and, and some of them are pretty good, but some of them look like a real grift. I remember seeing one writing workshop quote unquote, which taught about hope, punk, sweet, weird and squeaker and they were charging a good bit of money for it. And I’m like, motherfucker, we gave that up for free, you should get some kickback, I should chart we’re $1 a month this I can’t remember what they were charging. But it was like a good chunk of change for an online workshop. And I’m like, Wait, what the fuck? No, what’s this, I’m so mad. Um, so when
Kyle Winkler
I think about these, it’s like most of these things are people who can’t afford or don’t have the time or don’t know, the mechanics of art live too far away from a program that that is what tends to be the standard is an MFA program, right? Like, going to an MFA program that allows you to work with somebody for two or three years. And to produce a thesis that you then might be able to turn into a book with connections from those people if they have connections in the industry. And that’s usually how that works, right. And then there’s also like, independent ones that are put on by and these can be of varying quality, you know, like some, I always see a group, like at the local library, it’s like a local writers group. And it’s like, I would love to, I should just go just to see what that’s like. I don’t even know what that’s like, they just could be, you know, a bunch of little old ladies working on memoirs or, yeah, it could be dad’s writing, you know, like, their, their action adventure novel, Are people really trying to really crank out like a legit thriller or something, who knows? But every time one of these bookshop, things comes up, and I had to ask myself, like when I got offered to do this from Blick Cleveland there, which is a reputable group of people. I was like, do I want to do this? Do I have anything to say to add to think of a topic that I wanted to teach? And because it’s like, if I’m going to do it class or workshop that people have to leave with some feel like they got something. Right? I don’t know, it could be in any various, like, they feel better about analyzing fiction that’s their own or others, or they feel better about writing something that’s in their own genre or whatever. You know what I’m saying? Like, but I would hate to have to charge somebody, have them come in and leave and I’m talking about a one time thing. Right? Yeah, like, and then go, I felt like I wasted my money. That would be horrible.
R.S. Benedict
Yeah.
Kyle Winkler
So that’s different when you those are different, though, when they’re when they’re connected to colleges, right. So like, NF phase, right? Like there was the question, is it worth it to go to them? Because there’s always this What was that book a couple years ago? MFA versus NYC? Like, should I get an MFA? Or should I just move to like, and I got, I got an MFA many years ago. And here’s my advice to people listening. By the way, if you’re gonna get an MFA, go for it, that don’t pay for it. Right? Smart. But and I say that as somebody who actually teaches for an MFA that, that you have to pay for to get so I’m Trust Me, I’m, I’m being very, I know which side of the bread is buttered was the phrase that I’m looking for there. I know which side my bread is buttered on. Right. And I have when I applied, I got offers to, you know, they make you teach adjunct, right, thank you a stipend, which is quite low. But that’s how you do it, you say, Yes, you accept you teach one or two courses, you do your classes, you write your thing. And then that’s it. And if you leave, then you’ve got a little bit experience to go and be an adjunct, or whatever, you know, you keep coming to you do whatever you want to do. But when you pay to go get one, and I guess I should say this defending my own job now is that if people want to pay for an NFA, I have a couple of things to say, make sure that you are paying with money that you don’t have to pay back. Like, like your parents have decided you want to do this, or, you know, you saved up the money to go do it. Fine. I’m not going to tell people how to spend their money in that regard. Or, you know, you want to grant you know, or, you know, there’s always I’ve seen people pay for these things, but you know, going into debt, taking out a mortgage to get better at writing. No, it’s not worth it. No, so please don’t do that. But I have to say, from my experience, every time I look back on my MFA, I mean, I’m glad I got it. I met a lot of great people, I met great writers, I didn’t learn I did learn stuff. I learned a lot, you know, so I guess it just depends. But I’ve also met people who were both in my program with me and other places, who were like, No, I’ve wasted two years of my life. You know, I should not have done that. Or it was a click, you know, what you hear a lot about for it didn’t want what I was writing. That often happens, right? Yeah, I wanted to write x thing. And they said, No, I can’t do that. And so got booted, or got exiled or got ostracized or wasn’t taken seriously or something like that. Right. So I think being around other people who want to do what you want to do, whether or not it’s for a paycheck or not, is, is the key there is that being around other people who write and take it as seriously as you no matter what setting that is like, is what people are desperate for, I think.
R.S. Benedict
Yeah. Yeah, and just being around other writers. Successful or aspiring is really energizing, and really motivating and great. These writing is such a lonely profession, or lonely occupation, it’s you sit alone by yourself. And it’s kind of hard to meet with other people who are doing this. And when you click with the right group of people that can feel really, really good. And just, it’s hard to find that outside of like a workshop or an MFA program or something.
Kyle Winkler
Are you ever surprised? I’m always surprised when a new class of Clarion graduates comes out. And they go on to some success? Right, which I actually think their, their, their percentage of success is much higher than than an MFA program, getting into the places they want to get into. And I’m thinking like, Okay, what is it that the people who teach you these Clarion classes, which their faculty fluctuate every year? Yeah. What Eleusinian mysteries? are they feeding these people? Like, what are the tablets? Where are these coming from? Where are they keeping them? Right? Because I’m sort of like, I’m being serious, though. It’s like, what is it that they’re giving them? Are they just giving them like, basic writing instruction? Because it’s like, I feel like
R.S. Benedict
I think a lot of it is at least For the Clarion it’s making it very marketable to the that particular segment of the market. And I’m going to be a little more cynical and suggest that there might be a little bit of a little bit of favoritism and nepotism in play. I’m sorry. No, no, I
Kyle Winkler
don’t I don’t think you have to hide that. There has to be I know there’s there’s a good
R.S. Benedict
bid. That’s I mean, they got matching tattoos. Like one of the Clarion graduating classes, I think in 2016 They got matching tattoos. That’s a little culty you can’t tell me like, oh, it’s not it’s not a clique. Like you got matching tattoos of the alchemical symbol of arsenic on your wrists and photographed this and and the official Clarion whatever put it in their newsletter saying like, this is cool. This is a sign of how much we bond. Not. Hey, guys, that’s kind of fucked up. Don’t do that. Like I’m gonna say it right now, if any of you listening gets a right good tattoo, I will kick you in the teeth. Don’t you fucking do that? Like, I’ll be horrified. Please do not get our logo tattooed on your body. Never do this. It’s upsetting to me. Do not do so. But it was fucking people. Like said like, yeah, we think it’s really cool that you all got matching tattoos, like you’re in that invixium, Albany, sex cult Nexium, or whatever it’s called? Yeah, we’re putting that in our newsletter. That’s awesome. Like, no, you can’t you can’t tell us this isn’t a click, at the very least when you’re getting when you’re branding yourselves, talking
Kyle Winkler
about hustle in a very practical way. If, if what they’re telling them in these workshops is so we could probably ask somebody, I’m sure one of us know somebody who went, like, what is it that they tell you like, oh, well, they tell you how to, you know, like you said, tailor a story to be marketed and whatever. The part of me is, like, I don’t I immediately resist that, though. Because the whole point of that is, you know, if I write a story that is tailored to a certain editor or a certain market, right, I can already hear head shaking, as I say this, if I write a story that’s tailored to a market, am I writing that because I wanted to write it or because that’s the story that they wanted. And I know, there’s I’m sure there’s a middle ground there, it’s like, I can still have my artistic virtue, right, and my own vision, whatever that might be, and still market something and make it more rhetorically applicable to it.
R.S. Benedict
Also note that, I mean, I can understand that there could be commercial rewards in tailoring say, a full length work like a novel to the market, because you make a bit more money, not much, but you do make more money selling those short stories, even if you sell them, you’re not making much off of them, you’re making a couple 100 bucks. So it’s very weird to try to, to me to try to tailor that to the market to the pro mags when you’re still making basically some extra beer money
Kyle Winkler
at the end. And also think about the people who read these people who read these are actually people who have a really wide tolerance for strange things. They’re already weeding, SF and fantasy, right. So let shit rip. Why are you trying to curtail you know, it seems so strange to me that a particular type of story will show up in a particular type of publication. And it’s not like I was saying earlier, it wasn’t until you know, I I’m gonna gas you up again, I read one of your stories and Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction years ago, I was like, This is not like anything that I’d read in this magazine. Which is why I like it so much. Because it’s different. Right? And it’s like, and if you do that, I think we’ll have a better time as readers. And writers, you know, it’s like, the number of times that not just myself, although I’ve had many personal experiences where I wrote a novel, gave it to the agent. The agent was like, Okay, we’ll try it, send it out. And people said, Yeah, but we don’t really know where to put it. Right, doesn’t fit what we would like, we don’t have a good way to market it, we don’t have a good way to make it, you know, to the least common denominator, right? So, unfortunately, you know, we’re just gonna have to pass on it. And you’re like, Well, I know what I wrote doesn’t suck, the agent knew it didn’t suck. And the editor knew it didn’t suck. But there was some other bullshit reason that you’re really worried about a lot of you know, people walk into books and million or a Barnes and Noble and turning their nose up at something that sounds odd when in reality, right? Every time I mentioned you, every time I see people say this is the book that got rejected people were like, Fuck, man, send it to me. I want to read it. You know, it’s like, people are hungry for for different new stuff, which is the way I think things had been, you know, many, many decades ago. And it’s sort of all getting flattened, if that makes
R.S. Benedict
sense. But I feel like I feel like we should define a little bit what we mean by the hustle because there is a writing hustle. There’s a writing grind set there is this way of presenting yourself online especially as a writer, and I think what it what I mean by the hustle is this weird position that writers are and to a certain extent all content or all artists and creatives are in this new age is that we you find yourself becoming an influencer first. And then the writing is secondary to it, because unfortunately, it’s not a meritocracy, you don’t end up on panels based purely on the strength of your work, you don’t end up being invited to guest lecturer at a workshop based purely on how good your work is. And you don’t necessarily you’d certainly don’t get awards based purely on merit. And maybe you don’t totally get published purely based on merit either. No, I don’t think so. I don’t know. I don’t think that’s the case. So instead, what a lot of this comes from is promoting your brand promoting yourself and basically being a sort of influencer first, and a writer second, and so your fiction becomes secondary, almost like an afterthought. And it has to be part of this personal brand and the way you tailor fiction. It it’s fiction that gets a lot of traffic and a lot of buzz. Jun Martin, once referred to it as email Ford Enos in the most like perfectly savage insult. It’s very topical. It’s very soundbite friendly, very discourse. II very shareable on social media, which I’m wondering how that’s going to change with the way social media sort of becoming complete shit.
Kyle Winkler
should show extreme yet.
R.S. Benedict
But that’s what I mean by a lot of the hustle. It’s the hustle of being a writer of
Kyle Winkler
doing that stupid tweet that I did a couple days ago. That’s like, here’s how many words I wrote. Like, I really try not to do stupid shit like that. But I only when I’m when I’m online. I’m talking to like, 13 people. I know exactly who they are. And I’m mostly doing it as a sort of like, it’s a selfish thing. Because it’s like, I need I need. I need myself to know that I’m doing something. Right. And I can tell my wife and I can tell my kids and like, okay, great. Thanks, sir. I don’t steal my wife like I did this any worse. And she’s like, I have no idea what that means, like, how many pages is this? And I’m like, three pages? That’s great. Is that good? Is that a lot? I’m
R.S. Benedict
like, okay, yeah.
Kyle Winkler
So you know, it’s not. But people online are like, Oh, wow, really, you know, good for you, whatever. It’s, you’re sort of looking for this feedback. It’s that professional socialization I was talking about, right, where people are using on online, which I think is the positive part of social media is like, create positive groups of people who want to help each other out. And that those, there’s also the negative side of that, which is like, people who only are inspirational in their writing, and never really do I mean, like, making other people. And they might say, oh, that’s part of being a literary community. And I’m like, Yeah, but if it’s more like a chicken soup for the writers, so instead of, you know, an actual, what are you giving people you’re giving people actual structure is trying to make them feel good about the type of thing that you do, which is, I got successful doing this. And you came to three easy payments of 990.
R.S. Benedict
All right, so that brings us to almost a parallel I’ve noticed. So when writing were establishing there are a lot of people with big dreams that aren’t terribly realistic, a lot of people are willing to invest a lot of time and money in this, with this vain hope that they’re going to make it big. And a lot of writing workshops. Promise to tell you how to make you a great writer. And I think deep down what they’re actually selling you is success. Like they’re they’re sort of implicitly I think, promising you success in the industry, which is kind of iffy at best. And so you have all these people who are aspiring to do something and the most money is through teaching others and not necessarily through selling the product itself. It kind of comes across almost as like this MLM, like a multi level marketing scheme. For those of you who aren’t familiar, a multi level marketing scheme. It’s basically a pyramid scheme where you sell a product so an example is like, Lulu row, or Herbalife, or monete. If you’re still on Facebook, you might have been contacted by a former high school classmate who promised you a great job and great job and opportunity for independent women selling cosmetics and stuff like that. It’s one of those they’re everywhere and sort of desperate people kind of cling to them because it promises something awesome. It’s like yeah, if you invest a ton of time and just a little bit of money, just a little bit of money to buy your sample kid into this cool new independent venture business venture. Maybe you’ll maybe you’ll get it big and make six figures and, and be able to quit your day job and what is it is it Mary Kay That gives you a pink convertible or something like that. Now, I think it’s like a little SUV or something like that, but it feels so much like in MLM and that we have all these people kind of hopeful it pouring money into trying to make it when the reality is that like, most of you aren’t going to make it most of you are going to maybe make some beer money if you make anything. And the actual money isn’t getting more suckers to sign up for your downline under
Kyle Winkler
you, right. But the only part where that metaphor breaks down is the fact that you don’t pass any money up. Right? And you’re just making more people, you’re just you’re it’s even harder actually than an MLM if you wanted to put in new people that want to come to the class because they don’t stick around and pay you, they just go off. And, and the, but the idea of being like, hey, I don’t really have anything to offer you except the structure of the class, right? Is, is, is in the worst way. That’s how that happens. Where that turns into a bit of a suspicious, like, I’ll sell you success, or I’ll sell you glamour, or also you a mindset or a vibe really is what they’re looking for. And I think the problem is that the audience for intense reading has shrunk. Just amazingly, in this in this country, I mean, in this country, I’ll just there are other countries that still have very high reading, publics, but not really here. And not. And then when I say reading, I don’t mean like on your phone, you know, I’m talking about like, like, you know, subscribing to a literary magazine, or reading the Promag or right, but even getting things from a library, you know, it’s gone down considerably. So the audience has shrunk. However, the amount of people who are writing has gone up. So you have more products, in the sense of like it more hard. With read, we have more production of poems, and you have less people wanting to read it. And and now though, the audience has shifted to not readers, but other people, right? So writers are turning to want to be or would be for newer writers and apprentice writers and saying, Okay, you’re not going to read the thing I wrote that I’ll teach you how to write your own site. Right. And this is how this I mean, this is how I see it. That’s what’s happened. And so the audience has gone from being readers to want to be writers, or to aspiring writers. And you just don’t have
R.S. Benedict
the it’s not a healthy ecosystem, I don’t think no,
Kyle Winkler
it’s not. And that’s what I’m saying is like, alright, what I’m trying to get to anyway is like, how, let me give an example. Okay, so very practically, some years ago, I had out of nowhere started playing Magic the Gathering don’t I have don’t even know how. Right? And I had remembered very briefly when it came out in 93, when I was like, old enough to know what was going on. Didn’t do anything with it. And then suddenly, I’m 40. And I’m like, learning how to play this card game. Okay. I was so obsessed with in the beginning of that, I was like, Well, I want to write about it, because I’ve got all these thoughts, right. So I found a website, it was called hipsters of the coast. And they paid for my articles. Right? It was bunch of great people doing cool stuff. And then I have this like, scene that I wrote on my turn one in every month, and I got paid for your money, like you said, but it was no, like, I got three kids, you know, it’s nice to have a little bit extra money in my pocket for stuff, you know, and the pay bills or food or whatever. And I was only there for a year before we were told, like, Hey, we gotta shut down. And they had been going on for a long time. They were actually one of the longer outlets that had articles about Magic the Gathering and other games. And it turned out that they’re just like, we don’t have enough readers. There’s not enough ways to monetize. People don’t want to read this anymore. They want to watch YouTube videos, so they want to watch other stuff. They want to listen to podcasts about it, they don’t want to read the articles, and so stop, right so I don’t have that money. But that that was an example of a positive hustle. There was something I wanted to write about. I found a way to get paid for it. I did that. But it’s also an example of how the hustle, you know, gets dries up because of the other problem that we’re talking about, which is that people don’t want to read anymore or they’re not wanting to read certain things. So there’s
R.S. Benedict
there’s another side of it too, is that the hustle drives you insane after a while Oh, absolutely drives you fucking insane burnout. You burn out you become a weird I mean, becoming an influencer warps you into this inhuman personal brand soda. So does the writing hustle it warps you it also warps your writing into being a little bit more like viral and less passionate and, I mean, I’m talking about my own stuff going on there. I noticed that as I’ve gotten more like mentally healthy and just had more a lot happier in my life. We’ve lost subscribers. In the podcast, I noticed that every time that someone gets very angry at me online and a bunch of people get furiously mad at me, we would get a big boost and subscribers, which to me, that sounds like a kind of attention slash financial incentive to make people mad. But that’s not actually good. Like how the news works, that is how it works. And that that’s a lot how the attention economy works is controversy. But I actually don’t enjoy being controversial. A lot of people have accused me in the past of passive being a shock jock and being deliberately provocative because I want people to be mad at me, and I actually don’t enjoy it. It’s, it’s not fun having like, hundreds of people write to you and tell you, you should die and that you’re a Nazi, or something like it feels pretty fucking bad.
Kyle Winkler
Well, usually, people in your position, though, are not trying to be shocking or provocative for the sake of being provocative or shocking, like a Johnny Rotten or Howard Stern or something. It’s you yours. You’re saying what your opinion is? Yeah. And the people and, and it happens to be in, in the majority consensus, the one that people are not wanting to say, or isn’t held by a lot of people yet, or one that people haven’t really thought through too, too yet, like they haven’t thought far enough to get to where you were, or, you know, or, again, it’s like, the reaction that you’ve gotten from a lot of other people is slightly off topic that sort of seems like outsized to me. Like I just don’t seems
R.S. Benedict
outsize to me, it seems pretty weird. It seems very, very weird with, which is another thing I want to point out. Simon McNeil, friend of the podcast, wrote an article that appeared in type bar, and it was called nobody, no one wants to buy the future. And it’s about how the Sci Fi publishing in the United States is not in a great position. And a lot of sci fi publishers got really personally offended by it. But what I’d say is that, if sci fi publishing in the USA was in a healthy position, the entire industry wouldn’t flip out every six months over something that I say offhand on this podcast that has at most 400 regular listeners and less than 200 patrons, like we are small potatoes, if we, if your industry was actually big and healthy and robust, you wouldn’t know who the fuck I am. Well,
Kyle Winkler
many of us very small, many of us have forgotten to ignore things. Like, that’s what happened, like, you know, I spent most of my middle school years being ignored, you know, like, or, you know, you’re just being ignored. Learning how to just not respond to stuff is seems to be like a very powerful tool. So if you don’t like it, you can just not say anything, because it’s not as if like, you have some sort of presidential platform that you’re putting forward. And so you did, right Project 2025, you’re not trying to, like you know, you know, ruin or take over Europe or anything. That’s not what’s going on. It’s like an opinion about a genre that many people don’t read. So, you know, but in any case, going back to what you’re saying about the part where there’s just such a small amount of people who are reading this, you know, there’s such a small amount of people who are wanting to like I keep thinking like, who are, who are the people who have subscriptions to a lot of these magazines that we are talking about, like, you know, Lightspeed or Clarkesworld or, you know, SMSF, I mean, I have subscribed a couple of times to these off and on, and I dip in, I do this all the time, I’ll get a couple, stay for a little while, switch, maybe don’t get anything, you know, because I do want to support these places, but I also just sort of okay, like you said, you get tired, you know, by, you know, it’s kind of the same thing over and over again. I don’t know, it’s like, what are you supposed to do? We need people to learn how to write grants in these genres, right?
R.S. Benedict
I mean, I’m sure that Raytheon is writing up a grant for short science fiction and fantasy right now and working on it and, and are very wonderful, extremely publicly progressive, queer, feminist sci fi writers who are all currently on social media defending Neil Gaiman will be very, very happy to apply for that grant and to write very, very long long posts about why we’re bad for saying that that kind of fucked up to do so.
Kyle Winkler
Why is it always missile contractors who want to like underwrite, you know, something has why can’t it be? I don’t know. I just feel like we’re not being adventurous enough people in our field that’s interest enough to go Before What are you doing, I’m not doing anything, like, I don’t have time for it, I’m there I’ve got and I don’t know how to do it. But I’m saying like, I know there are people who can and there’s, there’s money out there to be had, you know, to be able to defund it, some people might go, Well, I’d rather just Kickstarter, which in and of itself is awesome, there’s people who are having to run these magazines, and raise the money to keep them afloat because like, I don’t know how these people are getting any sleep at night. You know, I don’t think they are. So, you know, but the, the, the negative hustle of let me sell you on what it is that I do. So you can then do it is always going to be in the lower, it’s always going to be, and I don’t think there’s ever going to be a way that it’s going to go away. Whereas, you know, like, the everybody says this, or I’ve heard versions, it’s like, you know, Melville didn’t have an MFA. Right? You know, these, these people were pre, all these sort of whatever we’re talking about this, like, draws towards learning how to write work done by people who just sat alone, mostly, you know, and read. And we’re very, very idiosyncratic. And that’s when we have these great works of art, you know, and so to some degree, I want to tell people like, and I say this as somebody who makes money off this, like, stop listening.
R.S. Benedict
Go up this podcast is definitely keep listening to this podcast, and give us $1.
Kyle Winkler
And, you know, like, go, give us $1 A month read weird fucking collections books that nobody else are reading. No,
R.S. Benedict
that’s my hustle. I will say one controversial statement every month for a dog about short five short science fiction fantasy, in exchange for $1. That’s not, that’s not a very good hustle. I’m not good at this. I’m terrible at this. No
Kyle Winkler
one could blame me for that. No one could blame me for the hustle part. So I guess there’s a couple things. Like, you have to ask like, how do you how do you deal with it? Like, how are you supposed to? Do we just like accept it?
R.S. Benedict
Or yeah, yeah, well, because there’s no What did we want to talk about some notable literary hustlers? Oh, yes, and examples are there. Sometimes, I’ve just been wanting to talk about them for a long time as people who’ve kind of I’ve, I don’t know whether to hate them or respect them, because on the one hand, they’re complete scam artists. But on the other hand, it feels like what they’ve done is only like a twinge scammy er than what it takes to get commercial success. In fiction publishing. Lainey saram. I might be mispronouncing this name, a way author, who managed I believe this was in 2017, managed to cheat her way into the New York Times Best Selling list or bestseller list by arranging large buys from verified New York Times reporting bookstores, and she was really clever and that she, she would mass by just under the amount that triggers the New York Times standard for red flagging mass book orders because they do this thing where a lot of times, writers or companies will buy us by their own book to artificially put bestseller lists like Donald Trump Jr, Donald Trump, a lot of political propaganda books, or politician books will like put out their memoir or their bullshit book and then have their teams buy like 1000s and 1000s of copies, say, look, it’s the best seller and then they’ll just throw the copies in the garbage or whatever
Kyle Winkler
they put the times we’ll put you know what the symbol is they put next to it.
R.S. Benedict
I think it’s a little daggers a little dagger next to to say like, this is fake. This isn’t real bestseller. But she was able to get her book, I believe it was called a handbook for mortals. Yeah, the terrible Mary Sue type book by first of all, figuring out what the bookstores that report to the New York Times work because they don’t look at every book that sold out all over the country. They just sort of take a survey of what’s selling at a certain number of bookstores. And she knew what these bookstores were and also knew exactly the number of books you need to buy from them to trigger the flag or the dagger and bought just underneath it. So despite having this book that was not actually accessible to buy in. On most format, she managed to get up to a massive, massive national New York Times bestseller list artificially without the dagger at least in the first week and it pissed off a lot of people and I’m torn between like being mad at her or going like honestly I kind of respect that. I kind of respect that.
Kyle Winkler
This is reminds me of students that I have it’s like all this ingenuity and then not doing the thing. That’s like, go be an engineer. So thing like go put that intelligence towards something that’s like why would you put it towards getting on the New York Times bestseller list like she clearly has the hutzpah and know how to like, like, you know, it’s almost like a really low stakes heist or something, you know, like, it’s a really bad Ocean’s 11. Like, I’m gonna get my book on The New York Times bestseller list,
R.S. Benedict
I kind of respect her for just mass buying her own book, instead of spending the money on going to workshop after workshop after workshop. Like, I wonder if, financially it works out to being the same amount like what
Kyle Winkler
did she I don’t I read the wiki page. I didn’t know maybe I skipped over if she made any money often, but like, probably not, it’s sort of like the really quick accelerated way of like, instead of like, the self published author goes and puts a bunch of copies of their book on the bookshelf like Barnes and Noble or something, you know, in hopes that they don’t get caught thrown away. It’s, you know, the network and now everybody knows unless then people read it and it’s really good and then you know, people like it
R.S. Benedict
is definitely not really good. There you go. So it’s not a good book. So
Kyle Winkler
what did she do she got a lot of people to pay attention to her for like a hot minute. And you know, now she’s just now she’s on this podcast being
R.S. Benedict
mentioned now she’s a fucking legend is what she is. Respect. I’ve gone around I’ve got common ground on it. I talk she I think she rules you talk to yourself. Alright. I think she’s squandered time folks. I would absolutely have her as a guest on this podcast. Maybe? Yeah, I should. I should lead you go. How to tell us how to become a best selling why author because well can actually give us a guaranteed way to do it. Unlike most of the people doing workshops. I
Kyle Winkler
think partly though, what could be what could be useful about that is like showing how fucked up and broken the whole system is. So that could be destructive. Yeah, to some degree, maybe I
R.S. Benedict
just think she rules. I want to hang out with her get a tiny call me. Yeah, yeah, we’ll get tattoos. Right good logo. No, daggers little daggers, ackers, little New York Times daggers. That’d be sick. Okay. Another really glorious, recent, amazing literary hustler Caroline Callaway. Now Caroline Calloway was an Instagram influencer. She managed to get herself I think a half million dollar book deal for her memoirs, while she was still in her 20s based solely on her ability to post pretty pictures of I think Cambridge and write captions underneath them somehow being a, you know, conventionally attractive white woman at Cambridge, posting who is good at selfies. She managed to get half a million dollars from RZ Oh, two for her memoirs. Again, she was in her 20s Who has enough material in their 20s to write memoirs, very few people. But what happened she ended up canceling this book and having being sued to pay back at least $100,000 of the money of the advance. Because this book, which she wrote, which was based on her own life, failed the Bechdel Test. She complained that her own memoirs were too sexist and focus too much on romance and on men. i It’s incredible. So this was in 2017. In 2019, she became kind of famous for running a creativity workshop that has been compared to the fire festival. Now I looked this up, it was only $165 for four hours, which isn’t that bad. No, that’s not that bad. It’s like crazy, one hour of which she did not attend. The topics were included heartbreak and authenticity, and how to do a good flower crown. And the secret to making a good flower crown was whispered individually into each attendees ear. And the secret was that there is no secret. This cost also included snacks, which she mostly ran out of. Including hummus, but at one point she ran out of plates upon which to serve the hummus. So she was spooning hummus into her attendees cupped hands during this workshop,
Kyle Winkler
this is more interesting than this sounds amazing.
R.S. Benedict
I think I love her. I think she rules so she’s still running around
Kyle Winkler
you circled around on the hustle thing.
R.S. Benedict
Yeah, she’s horrible but also she rocks. So she’s still running around cheerfully selling literal snake oil she’s she’s actually selling selling actual snake oil doing more scams and I believe she’s on only faster so see the reason that she is very pretty only fans
Kyle Winkler
seems to be like the like all roads lead to only fans. Yeah. On for a number of people.
R.S. Benedict
Good for her. She’s terrible, but she’s so terrible that she’s kind of amazing. Again, we’re at a point where if you’re paying If you’re giving Caroline Callaway money, you kind of deserved to get ripped off. So I don’t feel bad for any of the people she’s scammed. Like, yeah, yeah, you deserve this.
Kyle Winkler
Do you know I think about I don’t know why I just thought this had to have been only fans, which always makes me think of Flannery O’Connor.
R.S. Benedict
I take some hand, Thomas. I’ll take it. I wouldn’t pay $165 for it, but having it having an attractive white woman put hummus in my hand sounds pretty good.
Kyle Winkler
What could she possibly be selling you reminds me of the JT TJ Mackay seen from Magnolia, where Tom Cruise is like, trying to teach men how to tame women or something. It’s like, it’s that type of like, no, draw you into a hotel ballroom, you know, give you some Diet Coke and peanuts and say a bunch of platitudes over and over again.
R.S. Benedict
Don’t mess up the Diet Coke is leaking. She ran out of cups. Put your hands out to open your mouth, just open your mouth. Open it up.
Kyle Winkler
Let me ask you this question. Why did Why do you still persist in writing? Like, why knowing all of the barriers, knowing all of the hills and the heart ache, and the stoppage and all the negative shit? What is it that makes you still sit down and work on stuff?
R.S. Benedict
That is a good question.
Kyle Winkler
Okay, there’s,
R.S. Benedict
there’s it is not a rational pursuit. No, it’s not at all, I kind of almost think of it as an addiction.
Kyle Winkler
No, I was being sort of facetious, obviously with the cocaine part. But it is addictive. Because when you when you create something, you want more of it, when you do it well, right, or when you get a little taste of it. And I think that’s what people want is the idea of, I like sitting here, I like creating these things in my head. And when I give it to somebody and they like it, then that’s even more and more and more and you want to build it, you want to build it, so you’re willing to park money with other people who seem to know what they’re doing. So you can get where they are, so you can feel even better. Right? But like all addictions, right? More blow more heroin, more, whatever it happens to be is not going to get you to where you want to be. Right. So the hustle from that side, people who are get sucked into the hustle. And are other people’s hustle. Rather, I should say, Our people got a taste of what creative life can be. And they want to jumpstart it, they don’t want to put in, like the potential or the average decade or two that usually takes to you know, really, you know, put out crank out something crazy, you know, are really, really good. And they want to do it. Now they want to do it fast, you know, they want to instant instantaneously. And on the other side that people who are proposed, you know, putting on the hustle for other people are, you know, they like they think about all these people looking at you go and you have the answer that makes them feel good. You know, and it’s just it just feeds itself.
R.S. Benedict
So what I’m saying is that we’re opening up a new tear on the patron on the Patreon for $165 a month. For that our special flower crown cheer. I will personally meet you and put some hummus in your hands while wearing a flower crown.
Kyle Winkler
And then everybody will scream like in midsummer. We’ll
R.S. Benedict
all yell all Yeah.
Kyle Winkler
It’s the best $165 ever.
R.S. Benedict
Yeah, that’s pretty good. Honestly, that’s kind of what the discord is like.
Kyle Winkler
Yeah, that’s free. Yeah, well, that’s $1 $1. See, that’s we can get you that? Yeah,
R.S. Benedict
you can get that you can basically re experience you can basically experience that scene in midsommar when a bunch of women scream in unison
R.S. Benedict
it’s good. It’s pretty good. It’s a good little group. So how do we deal with the bizarre state of things? How do we cope with it? I mean, it’s tempting to say I ignore it. I completely ignore it. But that’s a little out of touch. It’s a little snappy, snobby. It feels a little fake. And to be honest, it feels a little bit classist. I know that. I know that there’s a tendency of just absolutely shameless, soulless hacks to say, Oh, those of you who believe in any kind of artistic integrity, you’re just classist and Willy there. There is a lot of turning, throwing out the word classist, and I think in a very bad faith way when it comes to the arts, but there is a reality. I think that even if you do have a day job, writing is time consuming. And it’s just perfectly rational to want to be paid for this thing that you’re pouring tons of work into, and being able to give up your day job and right Full Time. Sounds pretty fucking sweet. And I can’t blame anyone for hoping against hope to maybe get a chance to do that. Or even just saying, You know what, it’s nice to get a couple extra 100 bucks every now and then for putting out a story or putting out an article like saying, Oh, I don’t think about the industry or I don’t think about money at all sounds pretty unrealistic for those of us who live in the real world where where you have to spend money to have food and a place to live. But then if you give into it completely, even if you do succeed, which is very unlikely. But even if you do succeed, and you’ve managed to make a living and make it, it kind of sounds like a goddamn nightmare, it doesn’t look like it’s good for your sanity, it doesn’t look like it’s good for your craft, you become this distorted creature. That’s like just your brand. Getting more and more and more and more engagement and becoming less and less and less and less human. And then one day you wake up and you realize that you’ve decided to defend 911 today, and you ask yourself, What did I get here? How did I get here online? What am What am I doing? What have I become? I don’t know?
Kyle Winkler
How do we deal with that we allow?
R.S. Benedict
I don’t know the solution. I’m just gonna say that I I have no fucking idea. I’m sorry. I think it’s every individual writer, and what you’re going through for and what your needs are like, if you’re in a much more financially dire position. I’m not going to fault you for for doing the hustle a little bit more in being a little bit more desperate. I, I don’t have to do that. So I don’t,
Kyle Winkler
I was what I said. The thing is, is that people who tend to years ago, before the decline of journalism, if you were going to be some somebody who’s going to grind out writing quickly, and for money, you would be a journalist because the point would be to gather the information, write an article or column publish it, do it all over again. Right? You know, I don’t think people are really good at that. I think there are very few people who are actually really good at grinding out fiction over
R.S. Benedict
and over again. And it’s hard, especially to make it good. Think
Kyle Winkler
about people who did do it and made money off like Ray Bradbury, right. Ray Bradbury, who wrote a lot of really good stories, but I mean, also probably a lot of stinkers, too. A lot of trash, right? So admittedly, so. By the way, I also want to say the amount of snsf writers over the last 6070 years who also wrote pornography under different names. Oh, yeah, is right. So that’s a whole nother episode, perhaps. But like,
R.S. Benedict
Yeah, I mean, that does seem to be the one constant in terms of stuff you can churn out to, to make money is making porn, especially if it’s like niche or fetish stuff. I don’t know why there are so many furries, who have a lot of money to spend commissioning very specific fetish artwork, but God bless them, they’re the closest things we have to the MIDI cheese in our modern era, when you
Kyle Winkler
when you become a writer like that, you know, any genre sort of becomes your habitat. Right? If it’s gonna pull the table and pay your bills, you’re gonna do whatever you need to do. But again, that was when you could get paid, and live off of you in in your beat your capability of writing quick enough. Whether or not it was good or not, it’s different story writing quick enough, quickly enough, was was everything that’s off to the wayside now, because everybody has to have a job to some degree, right? Unless you’re being supported by some rich family member, which, again, is probably few and far between. So we can’t ignore it. But I would say if we talk about hustle now than if you have a full time job, I don’t think you can hustle. I think it’s something else. If you have a job. And you’re writing on the side, what you have is, you’re you’re just you’re you’re a writer who has a side hustle, you have a side hustle, which is the other job or the writing side has, or or you either or you take the hustle out of the equation and you’re just trying to write you know, it’s like, and then when, again, how much money are you making off the right? If it’s like 1% of your total salary that you make off your real job. It’s like, that’s not a hustle. That’s just a slight that’s like a hobby that pays you like you said, and beer and peanuts, right? So you have to sort of think about, by the way, people already know this. But let’s just go ahead and lay this out. Like, let’s say that you have a full time job and you make $70,000 with this job, right? Maybe that’s aiming high, somewhere between 50 and $70,000, maybe more, and you write on the side and you sell say five stories to a pro market every year. I don’t know if that’s good or not, but like let’s say that’s how many you do. That’s pretty good. And then how much money you making off of all five of those $1,000 total, depending on how long the story is. Who knows Right. If say after a couple years of that someone comes to you, maybe not the Penguin Random House, but smaller house and says, Hey, do you have an agent or you know, or an agent reaches out to you and you put together a collection short stories, you write a novel, and then you publish it, I guarantee you still not going to make a lot of money off that. Right? You could do that over and over again, you’re still not going to make money. Because you know why we know professional writers who do that, who who published short stories, and they published novels, and they still had to work. Right? And these people were grinding it out for decades. So it’s just, it’s never gonna go away. You have to like to get the conclusion here is if you want to write, you just need to want to write.
R.S. Benedict
So, all right, okay, I think we’re looping around back to the beginning. So I think it’s time to end it. But before we go, where can our listeners find your work?
Kyle Winkler
So I’m online everywhere, under the handle at bleak housing. And my websites, Kyle Winkler dotnet. And my books are on Amazon, or wherever you buy books. Most. So yeah, get in touch with me. Say hi. Or don’t or yell at me.
R.S. Benedict
Or don’t all right. Okay. Well, thank you for coming on. Thank you. And thank you all for listening. If you like what you heard, please head to patreon.com/write Good and subscribe. Until next time, keep writing good.