This week marks ten years since I graduated college. Since I was fortunate enough to find a couple of writing jobs almost immediately, I have been a working writer for the same amount of time. Ten years of being able to say that my job was “a writer.” A whole decade. It’s kind of hard to believe.
Transitioning from being a college student who cleaned houses for a living to a person who wrote and edited words for handfuls of different people was surprisingly easy. I was used to staying up until midnight (or later) staring at my laptop, trying to finish an essay with an almost empty cup of coffee sitting next to me.
The hustle in trying to find more writing jobs wasn’t new, either. I’d had at least one job since I was 16. It had always pained me to turn down work, but since I had struggled to find a job before my 90 days were up at a homeless shelter, I never felt like I had enough. I scrambled to look for more of it constantly. If my day planner showed that I had a weekend coming up with nothing on the books and my daughter was at her dad’s, I placed ads and posted in local parenting groups to offer my services. Any down time left a feeling like I was doing something wrong. Work was how I could somehow pay back my debt to society. Receiving grants for child care and food caused me to feel like I had to earn my keep.
This unfortunately had included sitting in class. Initially, I felt like going to college was respectable and just as important as physical work. But since my hours spent in a classroom or doing homework didn’t count toward the necessary work requirements for food stamps and other government assistance programs, the answer to my question of where I had the most value as a member of society was obvious: I was supposed to be physically working. Preferably at a minimum-wage job with a paystub to prove I had been there.
When Coraline was born a month after I graduated, any kind of child care—like friends, family, or a partner—was not an option. She went back to work with me when she was two days old. I remember being grateful for that—that I could work. Money was so scarce I didn’t have a choice. Though I technically had two jobs, my income was minimal—something like $700 a month, and varied a lot. I ended up working with Cora in my lap. This meant a lot of one-handed typing. One of my jobs was editing content for a local community calendar, and a weekly task that should have only taken three hours sometimes took nine.
These months were profound for me in what felt like my true beginnings of being a writer. There were many moments of feeling like I was really, truly doing what I thought was impossible. Looking back, it’s when I had the most faith in myself. I knew with certainty that I would make it. I just needed to figure out how.
I still have a deep fondness for the time I had with Coraline. It felt like we were a team, both working toward a goal to make college worth it somehow. My degree had saddled me with almost $50,000 in debt, and I stubbornly only took jobs that were writing and editing words. Since I didn’t have any kind of masters of fine arts degree in writing, I figured I had to build two things: my bio and my audience.
To make rent the month after Cora was born, I sold my beloved house plants, and rehomed our tiny dog so I could get our pet deposit back and not have to pay pet rent. Luckily I’d saved a lot of Story’s old baby clothes, and had scored another box for thirty bucks. I’d spent months telling people “diapers” whenever they asked what I needed, and sold the nicer gifts or hand-me-downs. For August’s bills, a church donated $1400, which I used for rent, a deposit on our new apartment in low-income housing, and making payments on a private student loan that I risked defaulting on.
Whenever people ask me what my “big break” was in becoming an author, I tell them about our 600 square foot apartment in low-income housing. The parameters were unique: after earning approval to move in, my rent was fixed, and not dependent on my income. I did not have to continue to reapply, or prove that I still needed to be there. Not only that, there was no income limit, meaning if I started to make more than what their cap was to qualify, I wouldn’t get kicked out. My rent payments were also paid through a program that would help me build credit. Aside from rules to not store garbage on the patio, we weren’t invaded constantly to make sure everything was clean. There was a handyman who fixed things promptly. We had two bedrooms, a smaller fridge with a freezer, a stacked washer and dryer combo, and a bathtub. I had air conditioning for the first time in my whole life.
Story’s dad has, for some reason, always paid child support. I’d just won a court case to bring that amount up to $600 a month, which was enough to pay rent and my cell phone bill with a little extra leftover. In the absence of housing insecurity, I was able to focus on work. At the time, this meant teaching myself how to be a freelance writer. Most nights, after Story was asleep, I sat on my living room floor with Cora in my lap, either nursing or sleeping, and my laptop teetering on a footstool in front of me. In the stillness of a quiet room, under my diploma that I’d put in a one-dollar frame from Walmart, I googled “how to write for a living” and “how to make money as a writer.”
But I couldn’t figure out how to get paid to publish essays. Everywhere I could find either had a submission fee or paid in exposure. For several months, I worked at a company called Ultius, where college students could pay for someone to write essays for them. It was good money. Well, good at that time. After I got promoted to a person who had access to higher-paying, “urgent” assignments, I made anywhere from $600-800 a month. Without knowing it, churning out 1000 words on various subjects in 12 hours was excellent training for freelancing.
An invitation to a Full-Time Freelancer Facebook group through The Binders changed everything. Now, instead of reading blog posts that didn’t give me that much information, and usually wanted me to pay them for a pdf I could download, I would scroll through posts. The group had files full of editor contacts and publications who wanted essays or reported features and what they paid for them. My eyes grew wide as I scrolled through emails for editors at The New York Times and The Guardian. I learned what and how to pitch, and to who.
After I had an essay that I wrote in college about housecleaning go viral, editors started to immediately respond—and favorably. I applied for a writing fellowship through a place in D.C. called Community Change that came with an $800 a month stipend. As difficult as it was to wrap my mind around the fact that I was literally living my wildest dreams, the fact that I had figured out how to get paid for it blew my mind. Every paycheck proved wrong all the people who’d once told me to quit college and be an Administrative Assistant.
By the time I had enough work to prove I actually had a decent-enough job to apply for child care, I found out I made $100 too much to qualify. My caseworker remarked that since I said my hours were 10pm-2am, it didn’t look like I needed child care during the day anyway.
“That’s not ideal,” I growled.
It would be months before I could afford a regular babysitter. By January of 2016, my income was enough that I could afford part-time daycare. And I decided to not fill out a recertification for food stamps, in awe of the fact that I wrote my way off of them. Six months later, two years and two months after I graduated with a BA in English, I’d have a book deal to write MAID.
I’ve told this story a lot over the years. I talked about it the other night in the
class I taught. But I make sure to credit the affordable housing. None of this would have been possible without housing security. When I say that out loud, or even type the words, I always wonder how many other artists could use a lucky break like that. I’m guessing there are a shit ton.Until next time.
xo,
-step.
This is so true. I have been in insecure housing for a long time and I often wonder what more I could have achieved with my writing if I didn't have to worry about that. I'm hoping to be able to buy a house really soon and I can only imagine how different it might feel when I no longer have to worry about that most basic need.
I love your writing. Thank you for sharing. I’m inspired to get my break on my memoir