Diversifying writing to make a living: Spinning yarn with Eileen Cook BY SKY REGINA
“There are tons of upsides to being a writer: you get to work in your PJs, make stuff up for a living, and play with your imaginary friends all day. But the downside is that you work in an industry driven by other people’s desires and trends. And you’re going to be at the mercy of that.” –Eileen Cook
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was taught that writing isn’t a viable career option, despite feeling a pull toward it from a young age. Writing was framed as a nice hobby, or a therapeutic mechanism to express my adolescent turmoil, but pursuing it as a job? Oh no, dear child— that would be both impractical and a waste of time. When I took a career test in high school, it recommended clown school (yes, this is a true story) over being a writer because, according to this highly reliable test, writers only earn an average of $25,000 per year (as of 2005). And that simply wouldn’t cut it for my lofty teenage ambitions of somehow being a homeowner and a globetrotting philanthropist. Fast forward through an aimless art history degree and a twelve-year stint in childcare—a clown-adjacent job if there ever was one—and I’m finally making steady money as a contracted writer/editor with Writer’s Block Solutions. When I set out to become a writer, it began with novelist aspirations, but when that failed to pay the bills I pivoted to copywriting and book editing while scribbling fantastical fiction in my spare time. With remote work at our fingertips and more companies leaning on writers and editors to flesh out their websites and social pages, paid opportunities have become quite accessible. However, with Canada’s soaring cost of living and a saturated pool of fellow writers, it’s also incredibly challenging to make a decent income, especially if you don’t know how or where to start.
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wordworks | 2023 Volume 1
Eileen Cook, Vancouver-based multi-published author, creative writing teacher, and dynamo entrepreneur, grew up thinking that wanting to be a writer is synonymous with wanting to be a princess; it’s a lovely fantasy, but not something you do for a living unless you’re Stephen King or the reincarnation of Charles Dickens. But Cook’s writerly dreams never dissolved, not even through a successful first career as a counsellor. “I had a day job for a long time,” says Cook, “but it was always my dream to be a writer and to have that be my primary source of income—I just didn’t know how to get there.” When Cook sold her first piece to a CBC radio program, it ignited the addictive spark that comes with monetizing a creative hobby—ambitions ablaze, she set forth. Because she was raised by practical parents, she gradually transitioned from full-time counsellor who wrote books in her free time, to part-time counsellor who sold a few books, and finally to rolling the dice as a full-time writer with a major book deal and a paid-off mortgage. And she never looked back. “Writing is work; it’s showing up, sitting at your desk, and turning in pages,” she explains. “You have to take a business approach around how much money you need to support yourself, and understand the difference between the craft and business aspects of writing. It’s usually not just selling books because that doesn’t offer guaranteed income. Most writers have to find adjacent work as well, and for me that started with teaching at Simon Fraser University.” Cook is the Speculative/YA Fiction mentor for SFU’s The Writing Studio, a part-time creative writing program where we met in 2019. Through this tenmonth program and the community she helped build at the Creative Academy for Writers—a paywhat-you-can online membership that offers writers