

Advice for new writers: Live somewhere cheap - petewarden
http://www.patrickrothfuss.com/blog/2010/02/fanmail-q-advice-for-new-writers.html

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RevRal
I moved into my mom's basement.

She got a job elsewhere and she needed someone to take care of her house,
which is paid for, and her pets and some farm animals. So I quit my job and
moved back to my hometown.

It is actually working out really well. I'm living here super cheap, I make
enough money coding, and I can focus on my writing.

I call myself a full-time writer now, since I'm writing about 5-9 hours a day.

Even though I am living really frugally, this is one of the best times of my
life.

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matt_is
1 hour : 1 day. I love living cheap because it creates miraculous ratios. For
every hour I work now, I get one full day in the future to focus 100% on
whatever I want. (I'm about to move to latin america to work on some new
stuff, and am finishing up a last-minute web/design contract before I go.)

Of course, a good ratio depends not only on living cheap but also getting paid
reasonably well for something that doesn't kill you (or your soul).

The first time I got anywhere near this ratio was 8 years ago, but to get it I
had to sleep in a tent, wake up at 5 AM and plant trees like a madman on the
side of a mountain every day for an entire summer. It was my own personal
hell, but then paid for a full year of doing what I loved for free, which then
led to the best opportunities of my life, so that I never had to go back to
those damned mountains again.

I'm not very good at side projects... I only really get into the zone when I
commit myself to something fully. So being able to partition my life into
discrete segments of "sell my services" and "build something I care about" is
valuable to me.

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GavinB
If you don't feel like living in "the pit," you could just get a full time job
that isn't all-consuming. Working an hour or two a night, finishing a first
draft of a book only takes a few months. You should then end up spending six
months to a year or more revising, especially if you're waiting for readers to
get back to you.

For most people the challenge isn't money or time, it's sticking with the
project for the year (sometimes several) it takes to produce a manuscript
worth submitting.

~~~
mortenjorck
This applies to product development, too. As 37signals demonstrated, it's not
impossible to build a full SaaS product on 10 hours a week:
[http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1605-ask-37signals-how-
many-h...](http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1605-ask-37signals-how-many-hours-
should-i-work-per-week)

Of course they were lucky on a number of counts for that to actually work out,
but really, the big thing they got right was probably motivation. When you're
already making a steady income, the push to ship something you've been
building on the side is nowhere near the push to ship something that's your
full-time gig.

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hexis
This is a special case of the general advice that keeping your expenses low
allows you to spend your time on activities that don't have to (immediately)
make you money. This is actually one of the main ideas in the Y Combinator
system, isn't it (ramen profitability, work at home, etc)?

~~~
jeromec
Yes, this is very similar to the advice Paul Graham gives when talking about
"ramen profitability", because it takes time for people to create things of
value - whether it's a startup or the next great Harry Potter story. In fact
J.K. Rowling talked about her mad rush to just finish the first Potter book
before returning to full time employment as a teacher, when there would be no
time to write. It's interesting to me the people who tend to create the higher
value things, artists in one form or another, are usually fairly poor. Not
sure how many rich people create new things of value, or maybe it's just
because there are disproportionately more poor people than wealthy people.

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weeksie
I'd narrow it down a bit—live in a cheap part of Brooklyn so you can actually
meet your agent face to face because they almost invariably live in Manhattan.
Even better, live in an artist warehouse in Bushwick so you have other people
around to inspire you. Then again, it's all about what works for you.

------
mark_l_watson
Actually, this is good general advice! After my wife and I moved from living
at the beach (exp$ensive) to the mountains (equally nice, and much cheaper),
Carol was able to stop working except for a few fun jobs and charity work, and
I can afford to turn down more consulting jobs and spend more time writing. We
have several people in our social network here who write fiction (ouch, a
tough business!) and I'll ask them tonight if it helps them live in a less
expensive area.

------
patio11
Speaking of Patrick Rothfuss: he's an new author and his book Name of the Wind
is amazing. If you enjoy fantasy and can get past the (overwrought and
somewhat preening "Hah hah I am a Real Writer Now") first chapter, I highly,
highly recommend it. It is my favorite book I've bought on my Kindle yet.

~~~
anatoly
How does it compare to Martin's _Song of Ice and Fire_ novels? (my new
yardstick for high-quality contemporary fantasy)

~~~
patio11
Imagine Martin writing Harry Potter about a manic depressive megalomaniac,
then narrating it retrospectively.

Less political intrigue (by about two orders of magnitude), far fewer
characters, frame character is better realized, far closer to Martin than
Tolkien on the grit scale although less explicit about it, rather more magic,
far closer to Tolkien than Martin in the heroic fantasy department.

I liked the first three Song of Ice and Fire books quite a bit, although in a
lot of ways they are not my usual cup o' tea.

------
starkfist
This can backfire. A good friend from high school went this route and he's
still never published anything. He now has 15 years of no real job history. A
bigger problem is that from an artistic viewpoint, his writing keeps getting
worse. It's easy to just slide into solipsism when you're living so cheaply
that you don't ever have to write anything other people would ever want to
read.

------
nagrom
This came up recently in a discussion on Charlie Stross' blog. He lives in a
seemingly large city-center apartment in Edinburgh. Although Edinburgh is not
London City or Manhattan, it's a pretty expensive place to live.

Part of his justification seems to be that for Sci-Fi, contemporary or near-
future, living somewhere cheap can isolate you from an inspiring community. He
also seems worried that living somewhere cheap can have a negative effect on
your life in terms of health care and whatnot.

[http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-
static/2010/03/cmap-4-t...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-
static/2010/03/cmap-4-territories-translation.html#more)

------
Sukotto
I only heard about Pat Rothfuss a few days ago (via <http://www.penny-
arcade.com/2010/3/3/#1267646560> ) but I've really liked what little I've seen
of his work so far. Got his book on hold at the library and will cheerfully
shill out for the whole trilogy if I like it as much as I expect to.

"The Muffin of Wisdom" would be a great name for a comedic fantasy novel about
a chef's hapless apprentice.

------
CoreDumpling
I'm curious how this might be applied to startups, as well as how it meshes
with pg's advice to work in a startup "hub" like Silicon Valley, where the
cost of living is anything but cheap. Is it really worthwhile to be subjected
to the mind-numbing gold rush culture* at the expense of many months of
"runway," simply because that's supposed to be motivating?

*OK, exaggeration guilty as charged, but you see my point.

------
scorciapino
Ah, the typical and noble starving artist, who sacrifices material well-being
in order to focus on its artwork.

~~~
jrockway
Yes. You seem to have a problem with that?

~~~
mtts
The sentiment is understandable. The myth of the starving artist suffering for
his art was already (mostly) nonsense when it was dreamed up in the romantic
era and it's high time, I think, that after two hundred years we start
thinking about putting it to rest once and for all.

~~~
_delirium
I'm not sure how much suffering was done, but as far as artists maintaining
cheap living arrangements so they can focus on their art without having to
earn much income, that's not exactly a myth. From French Impressionist
painters living in garrets, to 80s punk rockers living in cheap lofts, it's a
pretty common way of self-funding art production...

~~~
mtts
Yeah, but note I said it was a myth dreamed up in the romantic era, which
would be around 1800 or so. People have been making art since way, way before
that, and some of it is really quite good, despite the creators thinking of
themselves primarily as craftsmen rather than as purveyors of a higher cause
for which one should be suffering.

