I don't think you should take a vow of poverty to write

I got the idea for this post because of a podcast I was listening to this week. In an interview, a writer I really love (not going to be specific because it’s going to sound like I’m criticizing her, even though I swear I’m not!! I love her work and find her extremely charming and inspirational), I’ll call her Writer X, was talking about the process by which she wrote her most recent book (which is out now and doing well). She mentioned that before she started working on that book, she spent several years struggling to write, and taking primary responsibility for the childcare while her husband worked outside the home, and suddenly—her words, though not verbatim—she realized she had accidentally become a “housewife.”

That isn’t the first time I’ve heard writer-parents, almost all of them women, describe a sequence of events almost just like that one. “I was working on my book and it wasn’t going well, and some long stretches went by where I wasn’t writing at all, and all of a sudden I looked up and I was a stay-at-home mom, which I didn’t mean to be.”

This always irritates the hell out of me, even though I get it. Inertia is arguably the most powerful force there is. It’s so very easy to start doing something and then continue doing it. You can look up and realize you’ve spent five years in what was supposed to be a summer job, or welcomed grandchildren with a partner you can barely tolerate.

That said, I doubt very much that anyone looked up and realized they were a stay-at-home mom. Because someone needed to go buy toilet paper, and so money must have been coming into the house. And if you weren’t earning that money, then someone else must have been. Most likely a partner with whom you had an understanding, explicit or otherwise, that the toilet paper would be paid for whether you had an income or not. And publishing is slow and uncertain, so it seems unlikely that you were otherwise weighed down on a daily/hourly basis with the expectation that you would personally generate income and/or build a career trajectory. Though probably someone else close to you would be. As has been one norm in some (but not all) communities for centuries.

So, I never buy the twee humility of “I looked up, and” blah blah blah. But I get it! I know it’s just shorthand. And I know that stay-at-home moms are busting their asses in so many ways. I don’t take them for granted and I don’t think they’re admitting to having lucked into an easy life. There is nothing easy about raising kids. (Possibly a different story if someone else is funding the toilet paper and there are no kids involved.)

But I do think that that sentiment, which I hear lots of parent-writers espousing, contributes to a pervasive—and also completely false—understanding that working on a piece of writing has to happen at the complete expense of doing other things. And I think that is a particularly damaging misconception in a society (I live in the US) that is actively trying to make life impossible for the non-wealthy. Because remove the husband and kids from the equation. If Writer X’s years of struggle had not led to a book, what was she supposed to do, starve? Obviously not. But the bill-paying husband wasn’t a highlighted part of her narrative. It was implied that the book she finally wrote was life-changing if not life-saving. Couldn’t that be confusing to an impressionable writer getting started?

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I usually don’t give unsolicited writing or publishing advice, for a number of reasons. The main one: imposter syndrome. But also, most advice is useless. Beyond the basics, craft is subjective and meant to be stretched; and the publishing industry evolves fast enough that, for example, what worked in summer 2020 will probably fail dismally in summer 2025 (IYKYK). I learn best by observing, and I try to make it easy for others in my lane to observe me. Outside of occasionally leading workshops (where I still try not to be too prescriptive), that’s the most I feel qualified to do.

There is one exception, one piece of advice I give full-throated to anyone who asks and many who don’t. I do not think you should take a vow of poverty in order to be a writer. I mean this every which way it is possible to mean it. I mean this even though we all know that capitalism sucks and means we all have to make ugly choices every day. Setting that aside, here is what I mean:

1. I don’t have an MFA. My family has always emphasized education that leads to safe, non-speculative employment, and I went with the flow on that—after college I went straight to law school, then right into working in the legal field. I have always loved creative writing, and played around with it at every stage of my life, but didn’t start seriously engaging with it until several years after my other career was underway. Once I did, I went through a…3(?)-year period of MFA FOMO, worried I had already hamstrung myself by not dedicating a few years to that particular blend of creative immersion and concentrated networking. To make a really long story short, I do not feel that way anymore. Without an MFA I’ve published a short-story collection and will soon publish a novel—but even if I hadn’t, I’ve heard enough people I trust say not to sweat not having an MFA, or not to go into debt for one, or not to pay for one under any circumstances (this last from my former teacher Tony Tulathimutte, an Iowa alum).

   I know plenty of MFAs whose writing I admire a lot, and plenty of others whose writing I don’t. Exactly the same is true of the many writers I know who don’t have MFAs. So as a matter of science I think Tony is right. If asked, I would say you should get an MFA if and only if it would bring you joy to spend that time doing that exactly, and if either (1) you can do so with funding or (2) you won’t miss the money. I feel comfortable saying that no one should spend money on an MFA simply to check a box. When I go to festivals and conversation events to talk about my book, I am usually not asked about my nonexistent MFA. If the topic comes up at all, it’s just as a piece of the “How did you come to write this book?” question, and I don’t even have to mention the concept of a MFA degree to answer that. Yes, there are writers I would love to have met earlier in my life and who maybe I would have met at my nonexistent MFA program, but oh well. I didn’t, and maybe I did later or will someday anyway.

2. I have loved taking workshops, including some I wouldn’t have been able to access if the pandemic hadn’t made more things virtual. In general, workshops cost money. Maybe you can get some funding or find a friend who will help you get in cheaply, but in general you’re looking at three- to four-figure expenses. How can you manage that? If you can at all?

   I did an event once where, as part of a Q&A, an attendee asked me, in an accusatory tone, whether a particular workshop I had taken (which led, though not immediately, to my later getting a story published) was evidence of my privilege. And, well, of course. Being able to spend a few hundred dollars on anything is always a privilege. And I conceded that privilege to that attendee. But that attendee seemed to think that it was not possible that I had the money to spend, because I was then a pretty new writer. They were implying, I think, that I was there because some benefactor (maybe my husband) was letting me be there. I found that specifically to be a strange assumption, because I was in my 30s by then, with a day job. If I had to guess, I think that attendee was thinking that real writers pay the bills with their writing and not otherwise. That is, lol, not true. To say that most writers don’t pay the bills with their writing is an understatement. And it’s also not the case that the only other option is a supportive spouse. (For the record, my spouse 100% supports my writing emotionally, but not financially.) I had a few hundred dollars to spend on a workshop in the same way that many people with day jobs have a few hundred dollars to spend on, or invest in, other things they think are important. And as soon as I started selling stories, I set a policy: I can pay for writing-related expenses, but only with money earned from my writing. The next time I took a workshop, I used money I had earned selling a story. I started a ledger, and I insistently kept myself in the black. But again, I drew my line in some random place once I was able to, and only after the toilet paper was paid for.

   ****Edited to add!! That workshop I took was back when I only had one kid and childcare expenses were…let’s just say a LOT less significant. These days, I spend zero dollars on workshops. And I miss workshops! I hope that can change as our childcare evolves and finances change.****

3. I used to pay small submission fees to send my work out. I’m not sending stuff out often these days, but I would still be okay with doing that for markets I found worthy. My point is still…perhaps with a day job you can afford occasional $3 payments for magazines you really love. If not, also fine.

   I also, at least once or twice, paid exorbitant amounts to venues that I now think of as predatory. I would absolutely not do that again.

Anyway, that’s where I land. I’m very lucky, because my day job is, while not what I would call easy, a good complement to my writing life. I have to write a lot for work, and while most of it is technical, I think it strengthens my fluidity as a writer. I have good relationships with my supervisors, and I have PTO as an employment benefit. To do things like what I’m doing right now (visiting my alma mater to promote the paperback edition of my first book), I can cash in some vacation time.

If it were an either/or choice, I would have to choose the day job, because that’s where I earn my salary and where my kids get their healthcare. The thing is, though, that it’s not. Time and energy are finite, but life is so short that eventually it becomes inevitable that we have to multitask. Right?

Or whatever, we don’t! Not telling you what to do.