Leaving "Reliable" Work To Write Games and Fiction Full Time

If you've ever wanted to try your hand at being an author, a professional RPG designer, or any other creative career path, you've likely heard the warnings from the naysayers. It's not that they don't believe in your abilities or talent, but that you need to have, "something to fall back on." You need to have a "normal" job, even if that job is tangentially connected to your creative endeavors.

I took this advice... and it burned down rather spectacularly during the pandemic. So I thought I'd take this week to talk about how this is, largely, advice given by people who don't know what the hell they're talking about.

Never trust people who haven't been where you are, but speak as if they have.

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Needs Be When The Devil Drives

I have been a writer as my main profession for going on a decade or so now. I've been a newspaper reporter, I've written for magazines, and I've blogged for dozens of websites and hundreds of clients. My goal was always to write novels like my hard-boiled cat series Marked Territory and Painted Cats, or to switch over to writing RPG supplements and gaming guides full-time, but those were always considered a "risky" use of my abilities. It was better, according to a lot of people who felt compelled to give me advice, to stick with business-oriented clients who needed ad copy for their sites, or articles for their blogs. After all, they weren't making games. They were serious people, and serious people paid their bills.

I am here to tell you all in no uncertain terms that this is utter horseshit.

This is a fact. Not a discussion.

On its face, it seems like sound advice. After all a plumbing company or an environmental clean-up business seems more grounded than a company that produces games or novels... but it overlooks the fundamental point that behind the colorful splash art and the rolling dice, these companies are also looking to make a profit. You're creating a product, no matter who it is you're doing the work for. And in that regard the clients are all the same; like bags of cereal once you take them out of the boxes.

And when the pandemic hit, all those serious-minded business clients who needed blogs about their home repair services, moving aids, or garbage clean-up? They folded up and blew away in the breeze. I had several thousand dollars worth of work waiting to be approved by these clients that just went up in smoke. Some had the decency to inform me an order was cancelled. Most just vanished without a word, leaving me to try to track them down. So I went from having a relatively steady stream of income from all my "day-job" ghost writing and blogging gigs down to a bare trickle, if that, around the late Autumn of 2020.

You know who didn't go anywhere, though? You know who had all the work I could handle, and then some? My creative clients. RPGs had been doing pretty well during the pandemic as more virtual games than ever before started up, and people needed new, fresh content to consume. People needed stories and books to read to stop themselves from going stir crazy as they stayed inside except for the most unavoidable of chores and errands. Which is why it was around this time last year that I dusted my hands and said I was done with so-called "safe" and "serious" clients who needed a blogger, a stringer, or somebody to fill text on their pages. Because when things got rough, they abandoned me en masse without so much as a peep.

How's It Working Out So Far?

Starting early in 2021 I increased my monthly output on RPG supplements and projects. I started my own fantasy RPG setting Sundara: Dawn of a New Age, which has covered location like Ironfire: City of Steel and Moüd: City of Bones, in addition to getting into metaphysical aspects of a setting with no alignment system in Gods of Sundara, or discussing how the creatures of the setting are strange and unique in the Species of Sundara series, which has covered elves, dwarves, orcs, halflings, and the Blooded (half-elves and half-orcs) so far.

That wasn't all I was doing, though. I also released two novels (Painted Cats, the second of my hard-boiled cat series, and Old Soldiers, which is a dystopia thriller about defunct super soldiers hunting down a conspiracy), in addition to a fair amount of World of Darkness content. From Evil Incorporated: 10 Pentex Subsidiaries, to 100 Mokole Kinfolk, to 100 Hobs To Meet in The Hedge, I put out 12 supplements for this setting when all was said and done.

And then money, yes?

The end result of all this work, and the massive archives of articles, supplements, novels, and even my patrons? Well, as the year draws to a close, it looks like it's going to earn me about $10,000 and change for the year. Some of you are likely staring at that number in shocked horror, wondering how anyone could survive on that. However, what I earned in 2020 with all of the safe, steady, business-oriented clients while I wrote stories and gaming content on the side was about $12,000 and change. A difference, but not one as significant as you might think.

Now, I am broke as hell doing what I do. I'm going full-bore, hitting that grind every day, and I make less in a year than some people make in a quarter. But something you should keep in mind is that among creative professionals (especially those who work primarily in RPGs), I'm considered above average. The idea that you can just write books, create games, and then kick up your feet and wait for the royalty check is an absurd fantasy that might have been true for a handful of people in the 80s, but sure as hell isn't the case today.

So if you want to help me (and other creators like me who are having just as tough a time), but a book, leave a review, and tell your friends about it when you're done. Or become a Patreon patron, leave a tip on my Linktree, or kick me a Ko-fi. Every little bit helps, and we really do need every penny if we want to keep the lights on at the end of the day.

Like, Follow, and Stay Tuned!

That's all for this week's Business of Writing!

If you'd like to see more of my work, take a look at my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my noir thriller Marked Territory, its sequel Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife as well as my recent collection The Rejects!

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!