Author/writer Rebecca Solnit wrote this (below) on Facebook in response to this article in the Guardian that says you can only be a writer if you can afford to be one (are subsidized in some way or are rich).
Rebecca once was my supervisor at Citizen Alert when I was the Newsletter Editor. Her job was to approve my work or not as part of the Board of Directors for the nonprofit I worked for.
Here is what I say for me… I always wanted to become a writer and get published but did not know how to do so. I applied for many jobs at book publishing companies and newspapers. I even sent out my angst filled poems in the hopes of getting them published. Instead, I collected rejection letters.
Eventually, I met my mentor, teacher, friend and coach Rannette Nicholas, who believed in me and encouraged me to Go For My Dreams including becoming a writer.
Because Rannette had my back and gave me so much support, I completed college, wrote articles for her first newspaper Success in LA and wrote and led seminars and workshops (plus traveled around the world and eventually became a Newspaper Reporter/Editor and PR Director and Manager.
My parents discouraged me all the way, constantly telling me I would starve as a writer and that I needed to do something stable like become a teacher or secretary.
During college, I worked six jobs to put myself through the last couple of years to get my BA. Previously, it took me ten years at night to get my AA degree at community colleges and I wanted to complete my education sooner.
With my BA, I was able to get my first newspaper jobs. And then my dad was so proud, he bragged to all of the neighbors and showed them my published articles.
From there, working full-time, I began to freelance, writing articles for newspapers and magazines. This gave me extra income. And years later, got into doing PR for Rannette’s seminars and found I had a real knack for that. And succeeded doing PR for other companies, an accounting firm and numerous others. The pay was better and the stress less at times. And it was fun and easy for me to do.
I found that having a full or part-time job plus support and encouragement were the Keys to My Success as a writer. Financially, having another income made it easier for me to thrive. I co-authored five romantic travel guides and assisted other writers to get published and become authors.
For 13 years, I wrote a dog travel blog, Have Dog Blog Will Travel, which became popular and my dog Cici and I experienced many benefits from the blog.
Plus, I write poetry, newsletters, books and screenplays for much fun and profit.
Screenplays I am writing
Now, I write this newsletter and I do not have another job. I love to bring people often banned, censored and important life saving information ALL IN ONE PLACE so you don’t have to wander around looking for solutions and answers to questions you likely have since the mainstream media and politicians do not offer much but propaganda and fear mongering nowadays.
I am open to your suggestions and comments about how to improve this newsletter. Please let me know what you like or would like to see or read more.
A word of caution, I realize that not everyone wants to know the truth about what is happening in our world and that is sad and the way that it is. I just had someone completely miss the point and tell me that we were no longer going to be friends because I posted something someone else wrote that she did not want to read, oh well, I went ahead and blocked her. I am not going to try to convince anyone who wants to drink the Kool-Aid.
I encourage people to do their own research and I like to laugh and entertain people. She was watching too much TV and believing the media and politicians. For me, I find doctors, scientists and other independent journalists much more credible, silly me.
I am spending a lot of time writing and doing research, reading other newsletters and listening to videos to put this newsletter together, I would really appreciate your assistance in getting the word out about my work. I realize time is money and for some people they have little of both so I am working at bridging the gap and doing the work/research so that others do not have to do it.
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Thank you all for your time and subscriptions.
A word of encouragement to wannabe writers (and actresses):
Here is what Rebecca wrote:
This annoying piece is making the rounds again. The writer, who is apparently based in lower Manhattan, has been provided for by parents and a husband and therefore assumes all writers are like her and some of them are deceiving. She's wrong.
My parents cut me off financially when I was 17, I got myself through college and graduate school [SFSU/UCB], thanks in no small part to California's good inexpensive public universities and the much more generous federal aid available in the 1980s, took an editorial job out of grad school, left that for a job that didn't work out around 1988, and have not gotten around to finding the next job. I've published prolifically, articles even before the books, and then given hundreds of talks, in no small part just to make a living, benefitted immensely from a rent-controlled apartment for 25 years, and lived frugally for the first dozen years after graduate school and still have frugal habits even though I've done well the last twenty years or so. (I've also taught on the side from time to time, though that's never been my primary income or a stable job.)
I'm also aware that I'm an exception in that most people will not make a living from their art, and that the economy is currently far crueler to the young and poor than it was in my youth. Too, I know more people who make their living doing other things--poet nurses, novelist cabinetmakers, innumerable educator photographers and writers--than people who are practicing subterfuge about inheritances, spouses, subsidies from others, though they also exist. Yes, Virginia Woolf said an income of 500 pounds a year and a room of one's own, but then and now a lot of writers come up without those things. I've also noticed that privilege often insulates and results in bland, unchallenging work, so it can give someone the circumstances to be an artist but not the capacity to be a great artist. (I do know two great hardworking visual artists from affluent backgrounds; categories are leaky is one of my standby aphorisms.)
From Jack London to James Baldwin to Dorothy Allison to Ocean Vuong there is another history of writers to be told in this country. Both Toni Morrison and Willa Cather had successful careers as editors until they were making enough from novels to do that full-time, and they paid their own way. You don't even have to leave Manhattan to find unsubsidized writers from Emma Goldstein to Herman Melville to Audre Lorde to Patti Smith to Djuna Barnes to Lorraine Hansberry to Zora Neal Hurston.... #foreveryEdithWhartontheresaJackLondon