Charlie's Diary - The Writer's Lifestyle

3/20/2017 Charlie's Diary: The writer's lifestyle
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The writer's lifestyle
Being a selfemployed writer is not a lifestyle that suits everyone. In fact, there are a lot of
misconceptions about what the job entails. I've been doing it fulltime for over six years now, so while I
can't claim an encyclopedic knowledge I can at least give you a brain dump of my personal
perspective on it.
Firstly, forget the romance of the writer's lifestyle and the aesthetic beauty of having a Vocation that
calls you to create High Art and lends you total creative control. That's all guff. Any depiction of the
way novelists live and work that you see in the popular media is wrong. It's romanticized claptrap.
Here's the skinny:
You are a selfemployed businessperson. Occasionally you may be half of a partnership — I know a
few husbandandwife teams — but in general novelists are solitary creatures. You work in a service
industry where output is proportional to hours spent working per person, and where it is very difficult
to subcontract work out to hirelings unless you are rich, famous, and have had thirty years of seniority
in which to build up a loyal customer base. So you eat or starve on the basis of your ability to put your
bum in a chair and write. BIC or die, that's the first rule. Lifestyle issues come a distant second.
You are a supplier servicing one or two (rarely more) large organizations. You tender for work and if
they like your pitch they will cough up an advance payment against the deliverables. Often you will
discover in the contractual smallprint that if you don't hand over the deliverables on time and to
specification that advance, which you are using to pay your bills, becomes repayable in full. NB: if you
don't think you can do the job, you shouldn't take the money. Publishers are usually reasonable about
hitches on the production side, especially if you give them lots of advance warning and you're usually
reliable, but they don't have to be. And if you piss off your large customer, they can drop you. It's a
small field, and folks talk to each other. Get dropped by two or more publishers in a row, and people
will start muttering.
Being a prima donna or a drama queen is not a survival asset. (Being personable, businesslike, and
friendly ... well, that's another matter.)
You are almost certainly badly paid. A typical first novel in the SF or Fantasy fields nets an advance of
just $5000 in the US market. By the time you've been around the bush a few times, if your career's
doing well, you may be getting $15,000 to $20,000. And if your sales are good and you push foreign
subrights you may double that figure, over the next two or three years. But you can't do longterm
financial planning on the assumption that your advances will increase or your books will be big in
Japan. As often as not your career will stagnate due to circumstances outside your control, and you
may find your advances spiraling down. The Society of Authors figure I heard from around 2000 was
that the average novelist in the UK earns £4,500 a year. Which is even worse when you remember
that this "average" is skewed upwards by the presence of Terry Pratchett and J. K. Rowling.
(You shouldn't despair just yet, though. There are a lot of folks who write as a parttime occupation,
maybe turning in a novel every 23 years while holding down a day job. They tend to drag the average
down a bit, but they're not starving because they have other fish to fry. But writing novels is no easy
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blogstatic/2007/01/the_writers_lifestyle.html 1/22
path to fame and fortune, and if you want to earn lots of money, you should have gone into
accountancy or medicine.)
Your lifestyle consists of this: sooner or later (usually later) you wake up, do your usual morning pre
work routine, then commute three metres to your office, wherein you sit for several hours, on your
own, hoping the phone won't ring because it will break your concentration for a quarter of an hour
afterwards, if you're lucky.
Somewhere in those several hours you will hopefully write something. Unless you're already an Alist
writer who can pull advances in excess of $50,000, you'd better either pump out an average of 1000
finished (polished, edited) words of prose per working day, or go looking for a day job. There are
roughly 250 working days in a year (I'm assuming you take a couple of days a week off, and have
vacations and sick leave), so that's 250,000 words, which is about two ordinarylength novels and a
couple of short stories. Some writers do a whole lot more than 1000 finished words per day; some do
fewer. If you do fewer and you're at the lowtomiddling end of the pecking order, you will not be able
to earn a living at this career. Many writers do 250,000 words a year and still can't make a living. They
may have parttime jobs, to make ends meet, or a fulltime job and do the writing thing in the evenings
and at weekends. It's a treadmill.
In addition to writing you will:
pore over copyedited manuscripts, correcting editorial markups
write
grovel over galley proofs, looking for typos
write
keep track of your expenses and petty cash and do all the 1001 things that any small business person
has to do to keep HM Revenue and Customs off your back
write
enthusiastically deal with the press and interviewers, no matter how small or obscure the outlet —
publicity is always a priority unless you're big enough to hire a PR manager
write
deal with correspondence to your editor(s) and agent in a prompt, professional manner because if you
ever get yourself a reputation for being difficult to work with you are so screwed ... (luckily editors and
agents know that only lunatics and eccentrics want to be fulltime writers, so no small amount of their
time is dedicated to insulating you from the demands of other publishing folks, and vice versa)
write
persuade your bank to accept cheques drawn on currencies they've never heard of
write
learn more than you ever wanted to know about international double taxation treaties and the
associated exemption forms
write
answer your fan mail (if you're lucky enough to have fans)
did I say "write" often enough? I meant "write, even when you're sick to the back teeth of it, when the
current project is an interminable drag, when you can't even remember why you ever agreed to write
this bloody stupid book, when your hands ache from RSI and your cat's forgotten who you are and
your spouse is filing for divorce on grounds of neglect".
And that's just for starters.
The most useful piece of sanitypreservation advice I ever received on the subject came from another
writer (not sure who, but I think it may have been Mary Gentle) who, years ago, explained to me that if
you work fulltime as an author for any length of time, you learn to maintain your social life first and
schedule your work life around it.
This may initially sound as if it contradicts what I was saying earlier about BIC, but bear this in mind:
we humans are social animals. The novelist works on his or her own, closeted in a cell somewhere,
with as little human contact as they can get away with while they're working. It follows that eventually
you need to do the human contact thing. And you will receive a nasty shock if you insist on writing in
the evenings and at weekends: when you surface to socialize, most of your friends will be unavailable.
They all have day jobs, and they have limited free time. If your social hours don't overlap with their
free time, you just aren't going to see them. So, despite being free to work whenever you want, this is
a fairly strong argument for the jobbing author who values their sanity to keep evenings and
weekends free. Never mind the author who has small children underfoot and has to deal with the
exigencies of schools, childcare facilities, and the hundred and one other institutions that seem to
assume parents are on call from 6am to 9pm.
So what are the advantages?
Well, if you're successful, people will want to see you and talk to you. People who've read your books.
Sometimes they'll stop you to shake your hand while you're out in public. Often readers assume that
they know you because they've read your work, so their body language and approach is
unconsciously familiar, as if they've already met you. This can be really disconcerting, not to say
embarrassing, if you've got a poor memory for faces and names (like me): is this person a complete
stranger, or a longlost friend?
If you can keep the writing going and make enough money to eat out once in a while, you suddenly
find you've got a wonderful bonus that nobody with a day job has — you can take time off whenever
you like! Eventually the novelty wears off (there's nothing like fetching up with jet lag in a strange
airport an hour after the last shuttle into town has left to take the shine off foreign travel) but if you've
got a yen to visit strange places you can indulge it. (Hell, if you write about them you can even make it
a taxdeductible business expense — at least to the extent your accountant or common sense says
that you can justify it in the face of an audit.) If you're an SF/F writer, you may find that fans who run
conventions want to fly you in and wine you and dine you for the sake of your company. On the other
hand, if (like me) you can't work while traveling, this can put a bit of a crimp on your globetrotting.
What you won't get: book signing tours, stretch limos, and champagne receptions. Not unless your
book advances are way bigger than mine: those things cost your publisher serious marketing money,
and they're not going to spend that on you unless you're doing really well.
If you think I'm being a bit downbeat here, consider what a signing tour entails: you, the author, need
to hit at least two bookshops a day — preferably more — and probably two cities a day, typically for
five to ten days. This involves significant transport expenses, not to mention five to ten nights in
different hotels, living out of a suitcase. Your publisher has probably put someone on managing your
tour fulltime, so that's two people's accomodation and travel expenses that they have to cough up.
That's got to be costing them somewhere north of US $5000 for a 10day tour (probably double that,
easily) so your presence on the tour needs to boost your net sales by something over $15,000 to
make it a breakeven proposition. If you're signing standard hardbacks, odds are that you're going to
be signing your name more than 150 times per day to hit that target. And while you're doing that,
you're not actually writing your next book, which will hopefully make them even more money. No,
seriously: signing tours don't make sense and won't happen to you unless you make the bigtime.
Ditto the champagne receptions. Every year or so, when you visit your publisher, your editor will (if
you're lucky) take you out for lunch or dinner on the expense account, but that's living large.
So, to summarize: it's badly paid, the hours are weird, the office environment can be claustrophobic,
you can't get the staff, you're selling your wares to big corporations who can roll over in their sleep
and crush you if you don't make nice, nobody's going to give you a champagne reception, a stretch
limo or a signing tour, there's lots of business admin stuff to deal with, and you still have to cram in a
normal social life or you'll go mad.
On the other hand: you're doing exactly what you always wanted to do (or you'd get frustrated and go
do something else). And what could be better than that?
Posted by Charlie Stross on January 26, 2007 4:52 PM | Permalink
118 Comments
Vulpine | January 26, 2007 19:55
1:
Well, I for one am very glad you're putting up with the job stress.
Charlie Stross | January 26, 2007 20:15
2:
Hey, I'm okay at this. For a long time I was the only working member of my family who wasn't self
employed; the small businessman hat is one I'm comfortable wearing. But it's startling how many
people think that the writer's life is one of glamour and artistic credibility rather than a mundane job,
with everything that goes with that.
If you want to do the art, you've not only got to put in your time learning the tools of the trade
you've got to remember that it is a trade, and there are tradelike activities that go with it and that
you can't afford to shirk if you want to keep doing the important stuff.
Andrew Crystall | January 26, 2007 20:23
3:
Charlie,
Sounds like heaven compared to much of the computer games industry. I am collecting stories.
When I move on from this job, I will even tell them.
Henry Kenyon | January 26, 2007 20:31
4:
I can relate from a slightly different tangent. I'm a journalist and I've been fortunate to have been
salaried for my entire career. Over the years, I've considered freelance (read as selfemployed)
work, but as you've pointed out, its a hell of a lot of work. My point is that writing in many of its
forms is often overly romanticized. It's only when people become intimately acquainted with the
labor of writing that they begin to see the pluses and minuses of making a go at it. My hat's off to
you.
As it is, many thanks for your labors! I just finished Jennifer Morgue and look forward to more of
your stuff. ...wow, I never said that to anybody before. Anyway, from one deadline slave to another,
keep up the good work.
A.R.Yngve | January 26, 2007 20:57
5:
On the positive side, writers won't run into dangerously sexy female colleagues who write
bestsellers in a posh mansion and murders them with an icepick...
;)
6:
ARY: exactly :)
(Incidentally, nothing puts "the rapture of the nerds" into context like the kind of singularity fans who
really, really want to upload themselves because they're not too sure about this personal hygiene
thing. Yes, I speak from bitter personal experience.)
Tony Quirke | January 26, 2007 22:16
7:
If you're trying to make me feel guilty about that "typing with your feet up" crack, it won't work I've
had my conscience surgically removed.
On the other hand, I'm feeling slightly better about my own job, despite the neverending learning
curve we have to tread.
Simon Bisson | January 26, 2007 22:45
8:
Oh yes, the joys of the freelance writing life.
No one ever pays you for the research time...
Bruce Cohen, SpeakerToManagers | January 26, 2007 23:14
9:
Charlie,
Yes, it can be a hard life; but you've got a better attitude about it than some writers I've met. They
are either busy posing artistically, because they managed to sell one short story to a magazine, or
have convinced themselves that the way to be successful is to play politics with writers'
associations or the local writing community. The latter are sure that if they just cosey up to the right
person, their names will become known, and their ships will have come in.
I doubt it's a coincidence that I've never known any of these people to be successful as writers
longterm.
Closer to topic: the 1,000 word per day figure seems even more harsh when you include all the
time you spend on your stories that isn't actually putting new characters on the page: research,
plotting, rewriting to fix the howlers your friends or your editor find, etc.
Dave Hutchinson | January 26, 2007 23:23
10:
And that, Best Beloved, is why I have a job, even though in my dark little heart I really want to write
fulltime. I tip my hat to you, sir.
Steven Francis Murphy | January 27, 2007 02:17
11:
In the light of my first acceptance, I was so close to falling into Full On (maybe it is too late even
now) Prima Donna Mode over a completely seperate incident that happened years ago.
I think I woke up JUST IN TIME.
If I get into novels, I see myself doing the day job thing along with the writing. I think that will work
better for me.
Other than that, I agree with most of what you've said about the writing thing. I write at my day job
(rentadonut eating bastard/security officer) and when I'm not there, the only time I do any writing
is either in a cafe while editing or at home actually transcribing/punching in changes into the
computer. I write longhand so the transcription is necessary and I don't have a wife or a Turing
Compliant AI augmented cat to do it for me.
Good entry.
Respects,
S. F. Murphy
Trapped in a Place Called Missouri
S.M. Stirling | January 27, 2007 06:42
12:
Biggest perk I ever got was a bottle of wine from a fan in upstate New York. It turned out to be a
bottle of Chateau Lafite Rothschild... 1917... 8). Very, very good vino, btw. Not oxydized at all.
Yeah, Charlie's right, it's a weird life. He's underestimating the element of sheer dumb luck, good or
bad, if anything, particularly when you're starting out. Hit the right editor on the right day... or don't.
Most big American publishers get more than _sixty thousand_ unsolicited manuscripts a year;
that's the ones that still _take_ unsoliciteds.
It took me about 20 years to get to the level of income I'd have had as a lawyer. OTOH, I hated law
and would have killed myself by now... 8).
I prefer to think of it as the last of the handicraft industries, though, rather than a service trade.
You're producing a oneoff, unique product rather like handmade pieces of furniture.
This is why MBA's do badly in publishing. They're used to an entirely different mode of production.
Jonathan M | January 27, 2007 10:49
13:
I don't believe a word of it.
Charlie actually writes all of his novels at a small wrought iron table in a Tuscan olive grove.
As even Italy has winter, he wears a full length mink coat to keep out the cold and a 17 yearold
former olympic gymnast brings his steaming bowls of hearty Tuscan bean soup before whispering
in his ear that she's invited a friend round that evening...
You ain't fooling no one mister!
zornhau | January 27, 2007 11:10
14:
On the other hand, it beats the crap out of cubicle hell. I'd write a blog entry about that, but there's
a documentary comic strip over at http://www.dilbert.com/ which explains it all...
Andrew G | January 27, 2007 12:51
15:
I prefer to think of it as the last of the handicraft industries, though, rather than a service trade.
That's a good way of looking at it, though looking at writing as a whole it's much like some of the
other arts.
Take photography for instance. Like writers who are more concerned about writing literature than
earning money, there are thousands of photographers who take mainly artistic pictures, showing
them in local galleries. They remind me a lot of creative writing professors I had who had spent 20
years trying to get published in literary journals.
Then you have photojournalists, advertising photographers, fashion photographers. A lot of them
can be freelancers, and like novelists they want to make something good, but make money at the
same time.
Professional studio photographers and wedding photographers. Basically doing work for hire, and
making a good living doing it. I paid my wedding photographers $4000 for 6 hours of work, which is
a pretty decent living. I suppose these would compare to authors who primarily write media tiein
novels, or technical manuals.
Yvonne Hewett | January 27, 2007 13:46
16:
Good post, Charlie, esp on the business side. I've been freelance for the last (oh, god, think of a
number that's much too big) n years with the whole VAT, schedule D rigmarole. Horrible though it
is, that part of the job doesn't go away and can't be neglected.
The upside, even for an unpublished but aspiring writer, is the buzz that comes from being in the
writing process. There's nothing like it. It's the best legal high there is, and that's even on days
when the plot's wriggling out of control, the characters are talking back and picking fights with one
another, and the coffee supply is running dangerously low. So, I'm glad I'm doing it.
There was news at the BSFA meeting in London this week that you'll be at Pico Con at Imperial
College on 17 Feb. Great stuff I'll see you there!
Yvonne Hewett | January 27, 2007 15:31
17:
Uh, should have said, I've been a freelance TV writer and director for n years. Now, I'm writing full
time, mainly SF. Fingers got ahead of brain. Again.
S. F. Murphy | January 27, 2007 15:50
18:
S.M., everyone said I should have gone to law school. I'm certain I would have killed myself too,
after I'd taken a sizeable body count with me.
Besides, Me Hates Wearing Ties. Hates it.
I'm getting your Sky People novel as soon as I can get some money freed up for it.
Respects,
S. F. Murphy
Trapped in a Place Called Missouri
Graydon | January 27, 2007 16:57
19:
Andrew G
Technical manuals, if you do them in medical or computing fields, can get you a steady annual
income of 75 kCAD if you're calm in the face of insane deadlines, people who are convinced your
job is trivial, otherwise very good at your job, and have demonstrably been so for the last twenty
years. I'm not sure the job security is any better than what happens to novelists, though; writers go
very early in the layoffs process. It's also extraordinarily hard to do much better than that; there are
no technicalwriting Pratchetts or Rowlings in the world today.
I suspect the wedding photographers are managing a better net.
20:
Graydon: done technical writing, got my chops there. It can be good, but hell hath no circle like
unto being a tech writer in a software company whose editor is also your line manager (and who
has a journalism degree and no understanding of the tech in question).
Sue | January 27, 2007 19:36
21:
I was unemployed for a blissful year (blissful other than the poverty) and wrote every day. I didn't
sell anything because I was writing silly stuff (fan fiction) but I loved it and didn't mind spending half
my day alone in my home office at the computer. I know myself I could easily shift from fulltime
employed bureaucratic cubby denizen to fulltime writer. If it wasn't for the income and the fact I'm
the primary breadwinner, I'd give up fulltime employment and become a writer in a moment. Of
course, I'd have to actually have to sell stuff.
Martyn Taylor | January 27, 2007 21:26
22:
Okay, so what's the downside? You aren't going to get outsourced to Mumbai unless you actually
want to move there.
You keep on telling us how it is, and we know you're telling the truth. Yet the queue still starts on
the right...
23:
Upsides:
a) you can work any 12 hours of the day you want... (currently crunching a deadline due to time lost
to family illness in 2006).
b) You can work _anywhere you want_. I realized this and moved from Toronto to Santa Fe, NM.
The money all comes from New York anyway; all I need is a power outlet and DSL connection.
c) it's actually fun to do. I wake up in the morning and think: "Oh, goodie, I get to work today," and
am actually reluctant to do things like take time off for a movie.
d) you get to hang out with other writers. This is an upside if you like very intelligent, very wellread,
very strange people with lots of weird habits.
e) you get to read other people's books a year before they come out if you want. Major upside for
me.
24:
And when I quit my last dayjob, I danced around the office cutting up my tie with a pair of scissors,
throwing the bits at people as I sang.
Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers) | January 28, 2007 00:31
25:
I paid my wedding photographers $4000 for 6 hours of work,
6 hours at the wedding, perhaps, and another 8 to 16 for even a slashandburn level job of
examining the photos and picking a candidate set, cropping, adjusting and otherwise tweaking the
chosen shots, and then assembling the book so it can go to the printer. And that's with modern
technology: digital cameras, Photoshop for photo management and touchup, and the ability to send
an electronic markup to the printer. It took about 23 times as long when you had to print the
pictures and do a pasteup for the book.
I've been an amateur photographer most of my life, and tried a little bit of the professional work; too
much hard work for too little pay in the local wedding / cheerleader competition (yes, really) kinds of
jobs. That was in the old days of film, paper contact sheets and printing with an enlarger; today it's
a little easier (but I'm a lot older, so it balances out).
Commercial photography for catalogs, annual reports, advertisements and such is more fun, better
paying, and not so grueling a schedule (although it has its death marches at times too). But it takes
years to establish yourself before you can make a living as a freelance in that kind of work. It does
have the advantage that it's a wellrespected way to build up a body of work that you can use to
break into selling your photos as art.
So photography isn't that different from writing as a means of making a living: you can make a
living doing things other peoples' way, or you can try to make a living, and probably make less,
doing things your own way.
26:
This is why MBA's do badly in publishing. They're used to an entirely different mode of production.
Naahhhh ...they're used to a different definition of work. MBAs are taught that management is a
special field of endeavour and that managers need not know anything about the work they
manage. They believe their work is all about process and administration in the abstract, and that
there is no gap or necessary translation between the abstract and the concrete. So, for instance,
their work is done when they've completed the necessary changes to the organizational chart and
the mission statement. This belief results in some very amusing situations sometimes. Well, they're
amusing in recollection; at the time they're more likely to be either highly alarming or incredibly
irritating.
My personal opinion is that the whole Harvard MBA movement has been a net loss of value to the
US economy quite in excess of the (excessive) salaries they get paid, because of all the damage
they've done to the operation of the organizations they've managed. And that's not even
mentioning how they've trashed the English language.
Sorry to go so far offtopic; you pushed one of my buttons. Sometime we can make modern
management the topic of discussion, and I can do my ISO 9000, or SarbanesOxley rants. Great
fun for the whole family.
Graydon | January 28, 2007 02:09
27:
Charlie Ow. Editor = manager = bad, just in general. My favourite was finding out that there was
intense opposition to documenting any of that stuff at all. Document it, and other parts of the
company might use it and then demand a say in how it was developed, and that would be just
intolerable.
What I'm doing now is content process automation, which is kinda like trying to convince tech
writers (and the engineers producing the raw info) that they want to stop making oneoff, hand
rubbed finish, turnedleg Queen Anne furniture and start making Ikea flatpack furniture instead.
This is quite entertaining as an endevour from time to time.
Dave Bell | January 28, 2007 08:11
28:
And you don't have to deal with the Human Resources mindset.
Idea for one of the ASF ultrashorts: a writer's day if ISO 9000 compliance was required by his
publisher. (I'm biased: some of the principles assume more control over process inputs than you
get on a farm.)
29:
S.M. Stirling,
This is admitedly one of the perks of the games industry. The only time a suit is seen arround the
office is when a senior publishers reprisentative is in. And he dosn't blink when the senior designer
he's talking to is in shorts and tshirt...
Personally, I'm looking at writing a d20 RPG. It appeals to me as a designer and I can epublish via
web stores and still make a reasonable amount of cash for my time (and publish print later if it's
worth it). Sure, it's a crowded market, but if it was easy...
serraphin | January 28, 2007 15:30
30:
Hey Andrew C if you fancy a second writer to help with some of the D20 stuff give me a shout.
Especially if you're after a complete rules lawyer to go with your flavour :)
Mr Stirling. Thanks to you I now have my escape dance planned for when I leave office hell. Mr S
hasn't put me off if I can get the breakin, I'm going for it.
I just need to figure which one of the wretched tie snakes is going to get it...
31:
SMS: that's almost exactly what I did when I quit being a pharmacist. And for much the same
reasons.
(I'd been suffering from insomnia for three years without quite realizing why. That night, I slept for
12 hours solidly and the insomnia was gone for a long, long time: it only really came back during
the hairiest part of the dotcom boom.)
Chang | January 28, 2007 18:02
32:
Wow! Thanks for an eyeopening, honest description of the writer's life. 4500 sterling works out to
something around $9,000USD, which puts you into ramen, rice and beans territory.
I appreciate honesty like this as a fledgling, unpublished writer with one rejection slip to his name.
But I will persist. Perhaps after today's nap and late lunch I shall write more.
Thankfully, I have a day job.
Mark Terry | January 28, 2007 19:40
33:
I'm a fulltime freelancer and novelist and this is 100% accurate.
Best,
Mark Terry
www.markterrybooks.com
34:
And you don't have to deal with the Human Resources mindset.
I've never understood this bias that techtypes seem to have against Human Resources...
35:
I've never understood this bias that techtypes seem to have against Human Resources...
It comes from experience. My experience was

the HR person who told me that I would not be considered for the job I had already been given by
the head of the department involved, for reasons of minority quota (I wasn't black, or female, or
better yet, both. Also, I was a veteran, which apparently counted against me).
And the one who took great glee in giving us the news that we'd been laid off a month after most of
us had been told (individually, on a personbyperson basis, not a blanket statement) that we were
vital to current operations and would not be laid off.
And the one who refused to give me the bonus I'd earned (and was promised in writing) before
being laid off unless I signed a promise not to badmouth the company (which had ceased to exist
the day I was laid off, and so was hardly in position to harmed by anything I said).
And there was the one who used to lecture the management team (during my abortive venture into
management) about how to discriminate against women, minorities, and older people without
getting caught.
Are you sensing a trend here?
Martyn Taylor | January 28, 2007 23:03
36:
Its not tech types who have a thing against HR. It is human beings in general, and is similar to their
antipathy towards 'managers'
That sound you can hear is a hobby horse escaping.
Bruce Cohen, you are so right.
37:
It sounds like you've run into some shady HR people...
It comes from experience. My experience was
* the HR person who told me that I would not be considered for the job I had already been given by
the head of the department involved, for reasons of minority quota (I wasn't black, or female, or
better yet, both. Also, I was a veteran, which apparently counted against me).
In this case the department head is in the wrong job offers should always come from HR,
because managers often have no idea what they're doing. Legally, if the company say it's "equal
opportunity" it has to follow certain practices. It has to compare it's staff vs. certain federal statistics
to see if they need to hire minorities or women. Tech jobs almost always do, since there are so
many white men employed.
Often the HR staffing folks can't even make the call, they have to get clearance from a special
diversity office, if it's a large organization.
It would be the same as if the department head decided to fire you without clearing it with HR
which I've seen happen. There are certain steps they have to go through, and if they don't they
could be sued.
* And the one who took great glee in giving us the news that we'd been laid off a month after most
of us had been told (individually, on a personbyperson basis, not a blanket statement) that we
were vital to current operations and would not be laid off.
Sounds like the guy was an asshole, most HR people I know hate laying folks off. And unless you
have a contract stating that you're working for a certain period, I wouldn't trust statements about job
security. Some upper managment types probably decided they needed to cut staff more, and
someone else decided you could be outsourced. HR rarely makes the choice on it's own, and then
it's usually seniority based (which I personally hate).
* And the one who refused to give me the bonus I'd earned (and was promised in writing) before
being laid off unless I signed a promise not to badmouth the company (which had ceased to exist
the day I was laid off, and so was hardly in position to harmed by anything I said).
I'm not sure they could do that, legally, but it likely wouldn't have been worth the effort to sue
them...
* And there was the one who used to lecture the management team (during my abortive venture
into management) about how to discriminate against women, minorities, and older people without
getting caught.
LOL, we aren't supposed to share that... Of course, since management are going to discriminate
anyway (like the guy above who tried to hire you despite a diversity search), I guess it's a good
idea to make sure they do it in a way that's not actionable.
In our new candidate management system, we've disabled features that allowed managers to
comment on candidates they interviewed. Managers of having habit of commenting on people's
personal appearance, manner of speach, ethnicity, "vibe", family situation, etc, in ways that could
get a company sued...
38:
"Its not tech types who have a thing against HR. It is human beings in general, and is similar to
their antipathy towards 'managers'"
OK, so maybe the entire field sounds like term for managing slaves, but HR does get a bum rap.
Modern HR theory is very proworker. The difficulty is often in getting upper and lower management
to play along.
Jonathan Vos Post | January 29, 2007 02:35
39:
Charlie's a great manager of himself, which is not a tautology.
Any of the professional writers who comment here could go on at enormous length on almost any
of Charlie's excellent points.
As to the MBA/management subthread:
(1) I have minimal respect for the MBA degree at all, having ghostwritten two MBA dissertations for
cash (both clientsd getting MBA with Honors from a top Bschool), and living in a county disrupted
by a President with an MBA.
(2) I think Charlie did a good job of explaining that a professional writer IS a professional
mananger, attempting near optimal allocation of resources, which includes his analysis of himself
withwriter hat as supplier, himselfasmarketer, himselfassocial animal, himself as taxpayer, the
issues of scheduling, and the like.
(3) In MBAspeak: "a professional writer must strategize and execute effectively with all 5 types of
Competition in the John Porter (Harvard) model:
(a) competition with others providing the same service (those others in SFWA and kindred
organizations);
(b) competition with one's suppliers (or computers, software, paper, phone service, food, shelter,
travel, ...);
(c) competition with one's buyers (those publishers and magazine editors and the like), usually
analyzed in terms of pricing, as with his facts on advances against royalty;
(d) competition with governments (taxation, regulation, passports, and they have police and armies
to enforce);
(e) competition with changes in underlying technology.
(4) Interestingly, Charlie is a global leader in describing and extrapolating (e) above. His software
industry experience makes him, I should say, a superb manager of his cyberresources, and of
maximizing his own productivity through (broadly speaking) automation. Fortunately, AI's are not
yet serious competitors of ours in sense (a). Intriguingly, the postmodern construct of distributed
networks as writers (i.e. blogs and wikis that become stories and books) are part of the foreground
and background of the life that Charlie lives and describes.
Martin McCallion | January 29, 2007 13:15
40:
Andrew G:
I suspect the term Human Resources should take a large part of the blame. In my opinion it's
dehumanising, and should be excised from the language if at all possible. What was wrong with
"Personnel"?
Andrew G. | January 29, 2007 14:16
41:
This may sound funny, but "Human Resources" was picked because "Personnel" had a bad
reputation and it was thought that it would sound more friendly to have "human" in the title.
It has to do with the view of employees as being more than just the value of their labor, but rather
resources distinct from capital resources. The idea is to clearly define the role of employees within
the organization, and to develop them as assets rather than to view them as replaceable inputs
(like natural resources).
Bill | January 29, 2007 15:09
42:
It's great to see people actually discuss the reality of being a writer. Especially since there's such a
considerable industry devoted to blowing smoke up people's asses about writing and taking their
money while doing it.
43:
It's great to see people actually discuss the reality of being a writer. Especially since there's such a
considerable industry devoted to blowing smoke up people's asses about writing and taking their
money while doing it.
I know what you mean...
What it boils down to if you want to be a professional writer is that either:
A. You get really, really lucky.
B. You do it parttime for years in your spare time, until you either get well enough known to make a
living or you retire.
And even then, being well known doesn't mean you can make a career out of it. Look at Vernor
Vinge. He's been well known for years, but it's only now that he's retired and is presumably getting
a good package from the State of California that he can write full time...
Martin McCallion | January 29, 2007 15:25
44:
It has to do with the view of employees as being more than just the value of their labor, but rather resources distinct
from capital resources. The idea is to clearly define the role of employees within the organization, and to develop
them as assets rather than to view them as replaceable inputs (like natural resources).
But it does the exact opposite of that! It places humans exactly on a par with the other resources
that a company "owns".
Sorry to go on about this, but it's a particular bugbear of mine.
45:
In effect, employees are resources, and ones that decrease in relative value in our current
economy and rate of progress.
There are two ways to deal with that. One is high turnover, where you just let your employee's skills
wither and hire new people once they're no longer useful. This is not a good thing.
The other way is to actively develop your employees by encouraging them to improve their skills,
and work on career development. This is ideal, though it does have some opposition. Employers
have typically put a lot of effort into hire someone and training them. In addition, since pay
increases over time, if employees don't keep current with new technologies you've invested a lot in
someone who's not giving back as much as they did when they were hired, relatively speaking.
Of course, there are a lot of folks who just want to show up, do their time, and get their check at the
end of the week. Motivating them is a challenge...
46:
"Human Resources" always reminds me of what someone who knew him well said about Lenin.
"He regards human beings in much the same way as a furnaceman regards ore."
47:
I usually tell people who ask that they shouldn't try to write fiction professionally unless they want to
write so badly that they'd go on doing it in their spare time for the rest of their lives, even if they
never made a sale.
Remembering the early days, it's still a shock sometimes to realize that I went fulltime in 1988.
Mind you, while it was brutal, things were easier for a newbie trying to break in back then than they
are now.
48:
"Human Resources" always reminds me of what someone who knew him well said about Lenin.
I had a grim chuckle when reading your Draka books, and thinking what the term "Human
Resources" likely means in that universe. :)
49:
Andrew,
Yes, I have run into a lot of shady HR types. Specifically HR managers, especially at the divisional
or corporate levels. The workers in HR departments are usually like any other worker type: they
vary all along the spectrum of competence and benignity. Highlevel HR managers, on the other
hand, seem often to have risen ot their positions so that they can exercise the power it gives them
over people (see discussion upthread about the kind of people that get into politics for comparison).
50:
There are two ways to deal with that. One is high turnover, where you just let your employee's skills wither and hire
new people once they're no longer useful. This is not a good thing.
But it is a very common thing, not surprising in a corporate environment where the event horizon is
the end of the quarter. It's tempting to managers who are only measured by this quarter's results to
hire in as cheaply as possible, then use 'em up and spit 'em out so you can hire afresh for the next
project. This is also why some companies are so fond of contractors.
Karl Schroeder | January 29, 2007 20:58
51:
Oh, well said, Charlie! In my case, throw in a demented 3 1/2 yearold and a maniacal daycare
juggling act, and it's a wonder I don't just shave my head and join a klezmer band. What I've come
to understand in recent years is that success in this profession involves cultivating all the
interesting stuff that comes with it or surrounds itpublic speaking appearances, consultation
(foresight studies in my case), academic gigs or writerinresidence appointments, fulbright
scholarships like Cory's on... Which again turns into a massive juggling act where you're constantly
scrambling to find writing timebut, hey, you were doing that anyway so it might as well be with
interesting stuff for a change.
buckethead | January 29, 2007 21:15
52:
To dip back to the middle of the thread I am a semifreelance tech writer I've got a steady yob
and side gigs to pad out the income. It's been amazing to me, over the last seven years, how little
skill in English is required to be a successful tech writer. Most techwriters that I know came from
English/Journo backgrounds and never quite get the technology. Any toyloving geek with decent
writing ability can make a superior techwriter just because they'll understand what the developers
are saying.
Graydon missed one crucial point in the techwriter's life, though: having managers convinced that if
they finish the last build on the software, the manual will be done the next day. I've had far too
many managers who can't get their heads around the idea that you can't document features that
don't exist. Well, at least not terribly accurately. That lag time has been the source of most of my
job frustration, and at least one layoff. In that case, I was living in that circle of Hell Charlie
mentioned a polisci grad and company founder, who also suffered from a narcissistic personality
disorder.
53:
Andrew G, take the computer games industry for burnout. 5 years in, you're down to about 20%
allready. And this is in an industry where you'd EXPECT motivated staff.
Use em and throw em away. My current employers are paying me far too little, and I'm starting to
consider nonindustry jobs.
54:
One reason writing is such a buyer's market is that
a) lots and lots of people want to do it; and
b) they all think they _can_ do it.
There's an infinity of hungry newcomers who'll do anything to get published, and in many cases
they're quite good.
It's analogous to the situation in acting and most "actors" are actually waiting tables, doing valet
parking, and things of that nature.
Any time you get a profession where there are few barriers to entry and a lot of eager applications,
you get a reward structure with a few stars and a lot of people starving.
As I've told people, if you want a steady job with good pay, become a plumber.
55:
Umm ... yeah, but I hate plumbing. I spent a good part of yesterday afternoon replacing a broken
kitchen faucet It took so long largely because the previous owner used nonstandard hardware for
just about everything. And that was only a week after having to fix the bathroom faucet. And that
was only q couple of weeks after having to throw money at a plumber to dig up the water intake
line, because it had broken. Plumbing is rapidly becoming my worst nightmare. So that's clearly a
nonstarter.
Like everybody else in the world, I've got a handful of short stories in various states of
incompleteness lying around. It's clear I'm never going to get anything finished while I'm still
working for a living, between my job and the plumbing, so I've decided to work on the stories as I
get time, and not get serious about deciding whether I want to do it in earnest until I retire. Current
plans call for retiring in two years or so, so it's not such a long wait. That's one of the reasons I
hang around here: I want to hear how writers are doing things these days.
Noel Maurer | January 30, 2007 00:44
56:
If you want to write fiction, you're SOL until you retire. On the other hand, if what you want to do is
write, then there are plenty of other outlets that offer the upside chance of stardom with less
starvation risk. Journalism and academia immediately come to mind, but there are others.
On the other hand, you will, at times, probably need to wear a tie in both of those professions. That
said, while there is nothing good that can be said about ties, most people will enjoy the social
reaction that can be produced from the wearing of an unnecessarily expensive suit. So even there
you've got some compensation.
What I can tell you is that, sadly, writer's block is just as bad as when you write nonfiction. Logically,
that shouldn't be so. Sadly, it is. I'd be tempted to say that it's worse, but I suspect that's just an
effect of selection bias: people go into journalism or academia for other reasons besides a desire to
put words on paper, and therefore are more likely to suffer from extreme hueva when they
absolutely have to do so.
I could be wrong. You can count the professional fiction writers I know on one hand. Charlie? You
often find yourself trying to do everything but write the book you're supposed to be writing?
Trying not to write what I need to write is, of course, why I'm writing this and not what I'm sure will
be sublimely interesting things about Afghanistan. Can't I just point to the photos, add some
graphs, and grunt? "Ugh! Here, explosion! There, nation building! Ugh!" Be much easier. But ni
modo. Back to work.
57:
Well, yes, I want to write fiction. I've written a fair number of technical documents: product
proposals, architecture and design documents, etc; it's interesting, but not really fun when it's for
someone else's product or architecture. On the third hand, I haven't worn a tie to work since 1969,
and I'd just as soon keep it that way.
jett | January 30, 2007 02:19
58:
My wife is an HR person so I hear a lot about how that world works. A lot of HR makes a lot of
sense once you hear it in plain language from someone you trust. That said, the problem with HR
is that it tends to attract a certain type of person who is very much the opposite of those of us from
a techoriented world. One of the best moves you can make in any large org is to get in good with
the HR people, a small application of courteous interpersonal interaction is often enough to make
you stand out as NotAnAsshole, and then they're much more willing to dump the BS and tell you
thinks straight out.
On the subject at hand writing 1000 polished words a day is fucking insane. I'm trying to get into
fiction writing and I'm lucky if I can hit 100. Clearly I am not cut out for the field as anything other
than a hobbyist...
buckethead | January 30, 2007 02:58
59:
Jeff, not quite so hard as you think. It's a little over two words a minute, in a eight hour day. Your
post was probably about 150 words, just for scale. If you're motivated, and an idea to work from, it's
certainly doable. The problem is having both of those things at the same time.
Adrian Smith | January 30, 2007 03:54
60:
This may sound funny, but "Human Resources" was picked because "Personnel" had a bad
reputation and it was thought that it would sound more friendly to have "human" in the title.
There should be a term for this "peecee euphemism inflation", or something. It happened with
crippled >> handicapped >> disabled >> challenged, where they kept changing the name and
being surprised when the stigma they were hoping to leave behind just kept following on after.
My favorite was the attempt to change "brainstorm" to "word shower" because someone thought
the former was insensitive to epileptics (who were of course outraged when it was suggested that
they were that thinskinned).
61:
My favorite was the attempt to change "brainstorm" to "word shower"
Maybe they should have called it "word salad"?

The saddest thing about pcness is how easy it is to lampoon. The phrases practically parody
themselves; no real effort is required. I once tried to convince someone that "disabled" was
insulting, and that the term should instead be a portmanteau of "differently" and "abled": "diffabled".
He only realized I wasn't serious when I said, "Of course, there might be problems applying the
term to someone with a lisp".
Jett | January 30, 2007 05:25
62:
buckethead name is actually Jett (t's vs. f's), but thanks for putting that in context. I just spent the
past hour working on a story and wound up with ~400 fairly well polished words. Maybe 1000
words a day is more feasible than I initially though. Charlie makes it all sound so difficult, it's a bit
discouraging, although he of course has the privilege and curse of earning his keep as a
professional...
Tony Quirke | January 30, 2007 07:49
63:
(4) Interestingly, Charlie is a global leader in describing and extrapolating (e) above.
I hear JK Rowling is happy to use a ten year old laptop, so "global leadership" in this area may not
be all that worth it.
Re: HR I've been a union delegate for a long time now. I have to say I find it considerably easier
to deal with HR people than with the members of the union the HR people know what the
organisation want, and are prepared to deal on that basis. Members often don't know what they
want, and get caught up in unimportant details due to emotion rather than rational assessment.
Yes, there's a lot of seriously clotted language. Some of this is due to trying to say exactly what the
organisation is doing while not saying or implying anything inaccurate, and some of it is
managementyawp imposed by the people they answer to.
Lionel Barret de Nazaris | January 30, 2007 08:57
64:
About the book signing tours, if you're located in England, you can easily mix a nice trip and a small
book signing tour in Paris. The city is damn nice and *a lot* of people read SF there (in french or in
english).
When I was a the SF guy in this american bookstore in Paris, I got Robert Jordan and Ray
Bradbury do a signing session in the store this way.
M.Bradbury came first to enjoy Paris, second for signing stuff. In fact, *he* proposed us to come.
I am not absolutely sure, but I think it was the same for Jordan. He came to Paris for the holidays.
Both were quite happy with the session.
The publishers were quite happy too, but it was not their idea and as it was not a book signing trip,
they didn't have to finance it. The may have participated tho, i don't know the specific.
Just an idea.
65:
Lionel: hmm, possibly ... I haven't visited France in something like 25 years. It's probably time to go
back.
Tony: you're right about the tech. Actually, I'm mostly pissedoff about the CE industry pointedly
refusing to cater to my desire which is for something of about the identical spec to the One
Laptop Per Child project, albeit with a slightly better keyboard (say, equivalent to the Psion
Netbook). Videos? Games? Who needs 'em? I just want cheap, rugged, runs Linux or some flavour
of UNIX, light, long battery life, and did I say cheap and rugged? And ideally it shouldn't cost any
more than a very posh filofax. We have the technology to do this, we've had it for years, but
nobody's done it and nobody's planning on doing it because it's not as profitable as selling fragile,
expensive thoroughbreds.
Sorry, discursive rant over ...
Noel: yesterday I got mugged by no less than four requests for either biographical information or
email interview questionnaires. Never mind not getting any work done, I didn't even get all the
interviews done. (I did, however, join a health club. So I suppose there's some progress
happening.)
Branko Collin | January 30, 2007 12:24
66:
"I hear JK Rowling"
Is JK Rowling the North for (all) (aspiring) writers?
Serraphin | January 30, 2007 12:46
67:
Is JK Rowling the North for (all) (aspiring) writers?
Only her paychecks.
68:
"... my desire which is for something of about the identical spec to the One Laptop Per Child
project, albeit with a slightly better keyboard (say, equivalent to the Psion Netbook). Videos?
Games? Who needs 'em? I just want cheap, rugged, runs Linux or some flavour of UNIX, light, long
battery life, and did I say cheap and rugged? And ideally it shouldn't cost any more than a very
posh filofax."
Bah, Linux is bloated. I don't need to reprogram the device, only to work on (and read off) it.
The keyboard can be optional as far as I am concerned; I'd rather attach my own (portable)
keyboard than be stuck with whatever your dream manufacturer comes up with.
But why do you want this infopad? What good do you expect of it? Did you own a Psion Netbook?
"We have the technology to do this, we've had it for years, but nobody's done it and nobody's
planning on doing it because it's not as profitable as selling fragile, expensive thoroughbreds."
Ah, yes, the great capitalist conspiracy that's keeping the market away from what the market really
wants. :)
69:
"Only her paychecks."
She pays well, eh?
Kevin Doran | January 30, 2007 13:07
70:
For an industry, just like any other, that's shrouded in secrecy to outsiders, i love how you
continually give the unedited lowdown on it all.
71:
Branko: I don't want an infopad, as described.
I'm not a visual guy, I'm a textoriented guy. 100% text. I'll go without a GUI before I'll go without a
keyboard. The whole PDA thing started around 1990 at Apple when they decided to build an
overpriced chunk of bloat for executives who never learned to type in school. Now everyone can
type so what's the problem?
I want something with a decent, solid, builtin keyboard yes, just like a Psion Netbook. (And yes, I
owned a Series 7

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« Test | Main | A brief note from our sponsors »

Vulpine | January 26, 2007 19:55

Charlie Stross | January 26, 2007 20:15

Andrew Crystall | January 26, 2007 20:23

Henry Kenyon | January 26, 2007 20:31

A.R.Yngve | January 26, 2007 20:57

Charlie Stross | January 26, 2007 21:28

Tony Quirke | January 26, 2007 22:16

Simon Bisson | January 26, 2007 22:45

Bruce Cohen, SpeakerToManagers | January 26, 2007 23:14

Dave Hutchinson | January 26, 2007 23:23

Steven Francis Murphy | January 27, 2007 02:17

S.M. Stirling | January 27, 2007 06:42

Jonathan M | January 27, 2007 10:49

You ain't fooling no one mister!

zornhau | January 27, 2007 11:10

Andrew G | January 27, 2007 12:51

Yvonne Hewett | January 27, 2007 13:46

Yvonne Hewett | January 27, 2007 15:31

Graydon | January 27, 2007 16:57

Charlie Stross | January 27, 2007 18:25

Sue | January 27, 2007 19:36

Martyn Taylor | January 27, 2007 21:26

S.M. Stirling | January 27, 2007 23:15

S.M. Stirling | January 27, 2007 23:18

Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers) | January 28, 2007 00:31

Graydon | January 28, 2007 02:09

Dave Bell | January 28, 2007 08:11

Andrew Crystall | January 28, 2007 14:13

serraphin | January 28, 2007 15:30

Charlie Stross | January 28, 2007 17:06

Chang | January 28, 2007 18:02

Mark Terry | January 28, 2007 19:40

Andrew G | January 28, 2007 22:14

Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers) | January 28, 2007 22:48

It comes from experience. My experience was

Martyn Taylor | January 28, 2007 23:03

Bruce Cohen, you are so right.

Andrew G | January 28, 2007 23:13

Andrew G | January 28, 2007 23:21

Jonathan Vos Post | January 29, 2007 02:35

Martin McCallion | January 29, 2007 13:15

Andrew G. | January 29, 2007 14:16

Bill | January 29, 2007 15:09

Martin McCallion | January 29, 2007 15:25

Andrew G. | January 29, 2007 16:25

S.M. Stirling | January 29, 2007 16:51

S.M. Stirling | January 29, 2007 17:08

Andrew G | January 29, 2007 18:11

Bruce Cohen, SpeakerToManagers | January 29, 2007 20:33

Bruce Cohen, SpeakerToManagers | January 29, 2007 20:38

Karl Schroeder | January 29, 2007 20:58

buckethead | January 29, 2007 21:15

Andrew Crystall | January 29, 2007 22:18

S.M. Stirling | January 29, 2007 22:51

Bruce Cohen, SpeakerToManagers | January 29, 2007 23:26

Noel Maurer | January 30, 2007 00:44

Bruce Cohen, SpeakerToManagers | January 30, 2007 01:42

jett | January 30, 2007 02:19

buckethead | January 30, 2007 02:58

Adrian Smith | January 30, 2007 03:54