“Writing is like prostitution. First you do it for love, and then for a few close friends, and then for money.” - Molière

The above quote has been my bane for years.

Since I graduated with a writing degree, I've been freelancing alongside my other work. I've got an office job for the summer that doesn't require much writing, but sometimes it gives me free time in the afternoon to pick up freelance articles and churn them out for clients.

So far, this has been okay. Freelancing is like homework, I've found, except you get paid (a nice bonus). I did some quick calculations the other day and found I can make an average of about fifty bucks per week if I write one short article per day, which so far is pretty doable. It's not a lot, but they call us starving artists for a reason (and honestly, living in a first-world country makes the starving-artist thing more about self-comparison than survival and people already get enough of that in life as is).

The weird part about freelancing, for me, isn't that I'm making money off writing. It's that I'm making money off writing that isn't fiction. I've been writing novel-length books since 2010, and I went to college for writing with the main focus that I would be able to better write fiction. I also wanted to get qualified to be an editor, but mentally, I was always thinking about how I could apply new knowledge to my stories. Then I graduated and I hadn't yet published an overnight bestseller, so the options were limited. Thus, freelancing.

At first, this didn't bother me. It was mostly way to justify my reasons for getting a writing degree (which really isn't a good reason). I was good at writing, and freelancing was easier than I thought it'd be, so for now I didn't have to mind it. But then I started getting into the swing of things. My acceptance rate as a freelancer is spotless (save one miscommunicated case), and so I could feel good about my skills in that sense, at least for a while. Ever since I graduated, I have also been actively submitting short stories to publishers. I've even targeted one publisher in particular, reading their content religiously and writing stories with the exact feel of their other stories. The problem is, I haven't heard one positive response.

Last week, my article was about Betraying Your Novel. This, however, feels more like betraying myself. Getting (almost) automatically accepted on every freelance article, while getting (seemingly) automatically rejected on every fiction piece has been rough. After doing everything right and still facing rejection with the writing I really love, and all the while watching the writing I care very little about get me money, has been disheartening. Sometimes (a lot of the time) I wonder if I can really write fiction at all--if all the years I've poured into making these novels have been wasted. It's hard to lie awake at night sometimes and think that I've failed myself, and worse, I'm in debt for it now.

Usually, I can pull through my existential crises enough to keep writing fiction anyway. All the successful authors I read have urged me to be stubborn, and I definitely plan on being stubborn if that's what it's going to take. The publishing game is difficult, mostly because the rules change fast and very few are tactful (or lucky) enough to get all their pieces in the right place at the right time. I am neither tactful nor lucky so far, and so my backup plan is to remain stubborn.

While this will see me much farther in my writing endeavors, my self-doubt isn't something I expect to simply get over. Anyone who takes joy in creation knows how easy it is to crumble amidst constant rejection. It feels personal because it is our person we're putting on the page, in one form or another. The question "Will I make it as a writer?" has a way of circling back.

But, if I want to be able to call myself a writer at all, I have to keep writing. If I ever reach the point of not writing whatsoever, I'll know I've gone too low. It will never be worth sacrificing my commitment to my passion over the delay of its fulfillment. The love of words is still there; I just have to be stubborn both to the publishers and my own, doubting self.