I was panicking about jobs and my health, and the upcoming work requirement for Medicaid recipients. I was worried that teaching college wouldn’t be enough, and my sister was like, “What about your writing? Isn’t that one of your jobs?”

And readers, for whatever reason, what she said blew my mind. I had never considered that writing books under contract meant I was doing an actual job. This is probably because writing (and the arts) are considered to be a glorified hobby…and for most of the years of my life, I was writing without being paid, just putting in long hours with the hopes of being picked up by a publisher. I’m putting in those same hours writing now, so it doesn’t feel all that different.

And yet, I have contracts and royalty payments, and even more importantly, tax statements and paid taxes on my books! My sister was the one who brought all of that up, and she was like, “See! Of course it’s legitimate work! And it should count!”

So, since that conversation, I’ve decided to agree with my sister. I’m going to come out and say it loud and proud: Being an author is a real job.

Yet, why does it feel like there’s some stigma around that idea?

According to this great article by Aliya Chaudry,

[…] writing, outside of being a journalist or publicist, is also a real job. As a society, we often consider most artistic jobs such as painting, designing, dancing, filmmaking and acting as not ‘real,’ so to speak.

In my opinion, there are primarily two reasons for this. The first is that they are not seen as economically viable. Income for a career as a writer is unpredictable. It isn’t as organized and regular as desk jobs. There aren’t set hours and no annual salaries. This also explains why we consider journalism, with some semblance of a paid salary, to be a real job, whereas writing creatively does not fall into that category.

The second reason is that because writing is often pursued as a hobby, and as a social construct, a job isn’t supposed to be all fun.

Also, since it CAN be a hobby, it’s something that comes second to a real, paying career.

For decades I wrote in my spare time, completely on my own without pay. Even when I told people I was going to be a writer someday, I still treated writing as my hobby because I hadn’t “made it yet.” It was secondary to me, even though I desperately wanted it to be my primary.

The quote is right: writing income is wildly unpredictable, and when there are dry spells where you don’t get paid, it feels like you’re not working at all. I always thought teaching was my “real job” and writing was just a thing that I did because I barely earned an income off of it. It still felt like a hobby to me.

And this makes no sense! I am diminishing myself and what I do! I need to wake up and take this seriously. I am not writing just because I feel like it’s a good way to spend my time as a hobby. I have an audience. I have a publisher. I have an income. And readers, I have put in the hours. I spend around 10-14 hours a week working on my writing.

That’s no small thing.