Writing As Labor: Doing More With Less, Together

The following is the fifth installment of a six-part collaboration with Dirt about “The Myth of the Middle Class” writer. Check back here throughout the week for more on the increasingly difficult prospect of making a living as a full-time writer, or subscribe to Dirt to get the series in your inbox.

“It’s money I want, or rather the things money will buy; and I can never possibly have too much… More money means more life to me. The habit of spending money, ah God! I shall always be its victim. If cash comes with fame, come fame; if cash comes without fame, then come cash.”

This passage is from a letter written by Jack London, most famous for Call of the Wild, in a response to a letter from one of his fans in 1899, a postal employee from California. London spent his life writing everything from novels to short stories to reported newspaper features: a committed freelancer. He also frequently wrote about workers, their lives, their struggle as a class, and the systems that exploited them.

Despite being enough of a success to have fans writing him letters from post offices, the fact is he never earned much money himself. In fact, he actually tried to get on as a postal worker at one point in his freelancing career. If he had been hired, he would have joined William Faulkner, Charles Bukowski, and Richard Wright as postal workers who became successful writers.

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