Wednesday, May 21, 2014

I Feel Guilty For Not Wanting to Be A Copy Writer

I recently went on a cruise and had a lot of time to read. I brought along a copy of the book called, "The Well Fed Writer" written by a guy who wanted to work from home, be his own boss, and thought he wrote pretty well. The statistics in this book of how well copywriters can do amazed me. He says copywriters can charge $50 to $85 per hour and that most companies won't blink an eye. They write articles for newsletters and information for brochures, ad campaigns, etc.Technical copywriters earn less, but even still they are at $35 to $65 an hour. As a writer, can you imagine earning that much money? $85 per hour to do something you love? I was amazed. But then I really started to think about it and wondered if I could actually do that. Somehow, being a copywriter seems like selling my dreams short, Yes, while it would provide a very nice living, there probably wouldn't be time to write on the side for magazines or to write that book I want to someday have published. And then I thought about how I don't enjoy deadlines such as when I write for Textbroker. And when I write for the one agency I do write for, I hate the deadlines there as well. So to imagine a life full of writing determined by deadlines sounds awful and stressful to me. I feel guilty because right now, as a substitute teacher that writes online on the side, I don't make nearly the money I would like to make, or should be earning as a person with a Master's degree. In our marriage, my husband ends up with the bulk of the responsibility for paying the bills.The author is pretty bleak when he talks about how unrealistic it is to try to make a living as a writer of books and magazine articles and that people that do that are pretty much starving artists. Yikes...sounds like me although thanks to my husband, I am not starving. I suppose I could approach other non-profit agencies and tell them about my background in human services and promote myself as a copywriter since I know I could get a letter of recommendation from the director of the agency I currently do work for. But I don't want to. I want to hold out for writing my own articles at my own pace and also write that book someday. I'm just broke and feeling bad about it, and feeling guilty that I can't help out more financially at home. Any thoughts?


2 comments:

  1. Well, you know how grumpy I can be about the whole thing. I make even less than you do =)

    But what are we going to do? We can either:

    a. quit
    b. keep writing

    I'm just gonna keep writing my own stuff, and I hope you will too. Do what makes you happy, right? =)
    Good luck!

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  2. Thanks Chris. I don't want to quit, so I guess I will just keep writing!

    ReplyDelete