This first appeared on this blog in July of 2013. In the last few weeks, a couple of folks who couldn't locate it via my search engine asked me where it was and if I would repost it. Here it is and it starts with a letter from a reader who later wrote to thank me for writing it and for omitting his name…
Inspired by your latest Tales of Your Father, a question occurs to me that you might not know the answer to. As I'm sure you're aware, most people who set out to be professional writers do not make a living at it right away. In fact, even most of those who manage to sell their stuff never make the bulk of their living from it. I certainly won't attribute all of this to luck; apart from raw talent you obviously work at it. (I have no idea how you can keep up your blog so well and do your professional writing, for instance….)
The question I have is: for someone trying to break into professional writing today, what's the most open market to aim at?
The reason I realize that you might not be the best person to answer that question is that the market has changed so radically since you started writing, and the markets you make most of your living from today are, I think, not the ones you would advise a beginner to shoot for (at least not if he's hoping to make money at it). I think you've mentioned comics specifically as a near-impossible field for a writer to get into these days, and I'm pretty skeptical at a beginner getting television assignments either. (And, apropos of your story, porn novels of the type you're talking about are pretty scarce these days, too…VCRs, DVDs, and the internet have pretty much wiped them out, though I'm sure there are still some kinds of writing jobs to be had in that industry.)
But while you're writing for more selective markets, if you do know of any segments of the industry that are crying out for people who can put sentences together and even spell most of the words right, it might be something of interest to some of your readers besides just myself.
(Just as an aside: some years back…ten or fifteen, I think….I attended a panel at the San Diego Comic-Con on breaking into comics as an artist or writer. Most of the time was spent talking about art, but when it came to writing, they said there were four basic paths: (1) be an artist, and if you're good, someday they might let you writes some of your own stuff; (2) be a successful writer in another field; (3) move to New York, get a job at Marvel or DC as an assistant editor, work long hours for low pay, and hope to move up; or (4) submit unsolicited stuff and hope it stands out in the slush pile. The pro editors there all agreed the latter was possible….but none of them could remember actually ever buying anything that way…)
Well, you're right that you're asking me for advice with a problem I really haven't faced since 1969…and in a line of work that is forever changing. But I think I can give you a few tips…
Stay out of slush piles. There's a reason they're called that. Most of the unsolicited submissions that any editor or producer receives are not very good. Now, you might think, "Ah, but then my superior work will really stand out" and the answer is that assuming your work is superior — and it may not be as superior as you'd like to think — it doesn't. Being in that pile lumps you in with the folks who are in there because their work is so unexceptional that they haven't been able to be considered via any more direct, dignified route.
Moreover, in most companies, very little attention is paid to the slush pile. The top folks with the power to buy things rarely (if ever) look at it. Often, it's assigned to glorified interns to cull through, meaning that your work is read by people who hope not to find gold in them thar hills because they themselves want to fill any openings and get away from glorified interning.
The main path to writing comic books these days seems to be to your #2 — to have credits in movies or TV or gaming or any of the fields which comic book publishers like to think of as their main areas. Only a few comic book publishers these days are interested in publishing comic books for the sake of publishing comic books. Most see the comics as loss leaders to leverage them into other, more lucrative areas.
The secondary path — and it's a distant second — seems to be to make a splash with a comic for a small publisher. But it's hard to do stand-out work at a publisher which hires its artists at the 99-Cent Store and if you do great work in that venue, it may not get noticed in the major leagues. I started writing comics in 1970 and I don't recall it ever being this difficult for a newcomer to break in.
There's rarely a high-profile marketplace that is easy for new writers to crack…and for the same reason that there's never a lottery that's a cinch to win. Too many other people want to do it…and if the number of openings were to ever double, the number of applicants would probably triple. The one that would be easiest for you depends on two things: What you're good at and what kind of connections you have. You may think you can write anything but even if that's true — and it isn't — you're better at one kind of material than another. You need to weigh demand against the things you're best at and pursue whatever has the best ratio. If you're best at writing Gregorian Chants and second-best at writing wacky sitcoms, I'd go with the latter.
But really, it comes down to access. Do you know anyone in any company for which you'd like to work? Do you have a non-pushy way of approaching someone? And if you don't have access, you need to look for the markets that aren't high-profile, the ones that don't have a slush pile. That's what I did back in '69 when I submitted to Laugh-In magazine. There was an editor sitting there with pages to fill and no one to fill them. This never happens with Superman and Spider-Man.
It's not easy to become a professional writer and it's more difficult, though in a different way, to remain one for any length of time. It never has been easy and it never will be so I don't encourage anyone. I think a lot of people who believe they'd be happy to work in that area would actually be happier doing something else.
You have to be willing to accept a certain uncertainty in your life and you need to really, really keep a good perspective on your work and its value. If you undervalue it or overvalue it, you cannot succeed. And you need to be pragmatic about where you can get your work read and actually considered by people with the power to buy or hire. Once you have experience and a rep, it's different…though often not as different as you might think or wish. I'll post more tips here in the future as I think of them.