You make reliable money writing TV, not necessarily big money.
The biggest money makers in writing, meaning they get most of their revenue from it, write novels.
I think that the most interesting writing careers to follow are writers with diverse portfolios. Either writers who are also something else — scientists, lawyers, engineers, movie directors, etc. — or writers who don’t restrict themselves to one genre. Maybe they write novels, but they also write comics, and screenplays, personal essays sometimes, and whatever else.
Not sure if there’s big money in any area of writing more than any other area. There isn’t so far as my researches have yielded, at least. There’s people making big money in all areas, and adequate money in all areas, and only a little money in all areas.
Except playwrights, for no good reason I can imagine. They never make any money.
Or poets.
To your point, TV writers are, as far as I’ve discovered, some of the most consistently working writers around.
If you want to truly be a professional writer, I think TV’s the way.
Listen to this podcasts — it’s helpful:
After more than a decade of reporting crime from the streets of Baltimore, how did a career journalist like David Simon…nerdistwriters.libsyn.com
It’s a podcast about TV writers and writing for TV. It’s really good and quite interesting.
