My first writing job was penning five-star Google reviews for New York City businesses I’d never been to.

I earned fifteen dollars for each review, which took me about as many minutes to complete.

How do you write about something you haven’t experienced?

Consider it an exercise in fiction.

I researched the company’s amenities and offerings, then imagined myself there, plumbing for sensory details and descriptions that could make my review sound real.

For a spa in Brooklyn, I wrote how relaxed and serene I felt after a deep pore cleansing, although in real life, I’d never had a facial.

For an air conditioning servicer in Queens, I wrote about how comfortable I felt in my new college apartment, although I lived in an outdated dorm paid for by student loans.

I lied about going to a standout optometrist; eating Niçoise cuisine on 79th Street.

Why would I do something so unethical, potentially even criminal?

Imagine I did it because I was poor. Imagine I had swipes for the cafeteria, but no real money for food. Imagine that my meals sometimes consisted of fistfuls of cereal stolen from my roommate because the dining hall was closed. Imagine, that when I was forced to leave my dorm for holidays and breaks, I crashed on people’s couches because I had nowhere else to go.

These are the reasons I took the review writing job and why I was good at it.

I already spent a lot of time imagining I wasn’t poor, and those visions of social mobility involved strolling through Manhattan with glossy hair and new shoes to a job that paid so much I never had to worry about money again.

Which is to say, the persona I assumed when I wrote about visiting those spas and restaurants was not just a character—she was the girl I desperately longed to be. 

*

When I decided to major in Writing and Rhetoric at Syracuse University, I was as naive about the world as any other first-generation college student from a blue collar town whose main exports are cows and maple syrup, though I did know this: Writing is rarely associated with financial stability in society.

Unless, that is, we’re discussing the rare J.K. Rowlings and George R. R. Martins of the world (many of whom have attracted their fair share of ethical controversies).

Instead, writers fall into the same stereotype as starving artists, as mad and penniless as Van Gogh supposedly presenting his hacked-off ear to an unrequited love, albeit more drunk (and with a better grasp on their audience). '

The story we hear about people who make writing their main vocation is that they will become and remain poor unless they make it big, the chances of which are very, very slim.

So I did not pursue writing because I thought it would make me money, in the way that, say, a person majoring in finance might. Yet, I had a hunch that the conflation of writing with poverty was not entirely true, and that a different story was possible.

It wasn’t hard to see that writing was an important skill, one that many people got paid to do across careers in business, media, law, marketing, communications, and many more industries I wasn’t yet sophisticated enough to know about. Since I was already broke, I decided it was worth seeing where my passion might take me.  

My job as a fake Google reviewer didn’t last long. The agency owner ghosted me after a month, possibly because his sham was discovered and he had to rebrand.

Still, the job confirmed what I suspected: I really could get paid to write.

I held onto this dream through the many other odd jobs I took during my late teens and early twenties, from babysitting kids in the neighborhood and cleaning rooms at a bed and breakfast to handing out Cracker Jack snacks at a country music festival in very short shorts that were, unfortunately, part of the uniform.

At school, I got my own column in the student newspaper, pursued a publishing internship, and wrote a creative nonfiction thesis in my major’s honors program—all of which expanded my writing skills and with that, my commitment to getting good enough at the craft that someday, somebody might pay me to do it. 

Six months after graduating, my dream came true. I found a full-time job as a writer at a startup in Denver. It paid $30,000 a year.

Though I still had to sleep on the mattress I got for free off Craigslist, it was enough to pay rent in the basement apartment I shared with my best friend, where stray cats brawled at ear level.

It was enough to buy groceries at Trader Joes and sometimes go out to lunch with coworkers and buy myself a new jacket for my first Colorado winter.

It was, finally, enough to get by. 

*

Like any craft, the act of writing itself is not lucrative unless there is a buyer.

One can write novels all day in a romantic little attic overlooking a farm and never sell a single one, and yet, the money has to come from somewhere.

Such a person would need another job to support their writing habit. If not, perhaps they have a well-off partner for support, or, the lucky draw of being born into a wealthy family.

I was once in a writing group with people who fell into such categories, and one day, I complained to them about how I struggled to find time to write between working full time and going to grad school. 

One of them said, “Writing is still hard without a job, I find endless excuses not to write!” 

I thought the comparison was offensive, as if procrastinating on your novel while sorting whites for the laundry was as taxing as having to hustle at a real job, living paycheck to paycheck.

I then developed the (admittedly cynical) opinion that I’m not interested in work by writers who do not have to support themselves.

If you’ve never worked hard for what you have, I thought, what could you possibly have to teach a person like me? 

*

Another truth in the stereotype stems from the fact that there is little money involved in writing education. Many working creative writers in the U.S. are drawn to professor jobs because they at least afford proximity to literary communities, summers off, and flexibility to write.

But the low salary of an average adjunct writing professor salary is not aligned with the actual value that teaching provides.

Because isn’t a teacher—the person who guides the intelligence and human potential of the next generation—society’s most important asset?

Even more puzzling is that we are taught to think of the person who pursues a career in creative writing as someone who is explicitly in it for the passion, never the paycheck, a point of view which ignores the importance of storytelling in our world and the billions of dollars it generates.

Your favorite Netflix original series, Colleen Hoover’s franchise, true crime podcasts, Reese’s and Jenna’s and Oprah’s Book Clubs, Taylor Swift’s Eras tour, and Hollywood itself, would not be possible without the art and craft of writing.

At my startup job, I learned to write SEO-driven blog posts, interview successful business owners, create technical user guides, communicate with confused customers, navigate office politics, and pitch my own story ideas. The job was content marketing, meaning the goal of everything I wrote was to drive leads for the business.

The salesy nature of this job, however, didn’t negate the fact that it was creative, expansive, challenging, lucrative, and often fun. That job led to a seven-year freelance career, followed by a return to corporate marketing, which has since provided stability and peace of mind while I’ve pursued many creative goals, such as receiving my master’s degree in creative writing and finishing my memoir.

I used to feel bad about having to work a day job to support my creative endeavor—being in the company of any of those well-off “full-time artists” made me feel bad about myself.

That was before I realized that the work I do for a paycheck makes my creative writing better.

Copywriting for ads has taught me how to be succinct, which sharpens my prose.

Working for technology and science companies makes it easier to incorporate research into my writing, which strengthens my arguments.

Devising clickbait headlines has improved my pitch subject lines, so my emails stand out in editors’ inboxes.

I’m no longer bitter toward the writers who don’t have to work to support themselves, because they’re right—writing still requires dedication, regardless of what you do for a day job (or if you have one at all).

At times, my day job frustrates and exhausts me, and I hope I won’t have to do it forever.

Ultimately, this gig provides financial stability and peace of mind: two things my creative brain needs to thrive after years of living in poverty.

I’m not a famous novelist, nor am I independently rich. I’m also far from starving.

I don’t fall into any categorical stereotype about full-time writers, and yet, it is both my livelihood and my passion.

I am a full-time artist, because my identity as a creative person doesn’t disappear when I’m working at my marketing job. It just so happens that in my life, writing will always be inextricably tied to poverty, because writing is my path to a life beyond it.