How I Made Millions Writing
To Mencken, with love and squalor.
“Nobody ever went broke underestimating the tastes of the American public.” H.L. Mencken
At one point in my career, I made $10,000 a month. I only mention this because a week before that, I was broke. I didn’t even own a warm coat.
Being without a warm coat in Canada is very un-Canadian. We’re serious about coats. Certainly more so than, say, Georgians. They’re serious about conspiracies and presidents with bad hair who talk about conspiracies.
I’m glad Canadians are more serious about coats.
I digress. You want to know how I made millions from writing. Was it a screenplay? A recipe book? A cyborg version of “Bridges of Madison County”?
Obviously I didn’t make my millions selling shoes.
No, I was just an ordinary advertising copywriter. Before that, I was a shoe salesman. Obviously, I didn’t make my millions selling shoes.
Get To The Point, If There Is One
I made the mistake of believing H.L. Mencken when he said, “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the tastes of the American public.” I thought, There’s a job with security.
Every copywriter who’s ever lived probably read that quote. They saw dollar signs, Easy Money. They made their way to the Golden Arches of Advertising. I did the same. What choice did I have? I was a shoe salesman.
Little did I know H.L. Mencken was staring down at me, calling me a greedy puss. He was being sardonic, I was being capitalistic. You see where this is going, don’t you? I was about to be damned by a satirist.
I’m Just A Poe Boy, From A Poe Family
Again, you don’t want to hear about this. Fuck Mencken. Get to the making millions part. Well, to be honest, I exaggerate. Not that I haven’t made millions. But you’d have to stretch the truth over 40 years. If I averaged out my yearly salary at, say, $60,000, it comes to $2,400,000.
Edgar Allan Poe only earned $6,200 in his entire lifetime. Adjusting for inflation, that’s approximately $191,087.
I realize lots of people have made millions calculating this way. So what? Edgar Allan Poe only earned $6,200 in his entire lifetime. Adjusting for inflation, that’s approximately $191,087.
I’ve made $2,208,913 more than Edgar Allan Poe. And don’t get me started on Hemingway. His estate was only worth $1.5 million when he died.
He sponged off two wives.
Hemingway also never earned $10,000 a month. Even if he had, he would’ve spent it on yachts and writing towers. Most writers do when they hit the big time. I was frugal. I bought a warm coat. I was thinking Canadian.
We Interrupt This Program To Sell Boner Pills
Mencken was still looking down on me, clucking his tongue. Not because I’d bought a warm coat, but because I made my $10,000 a month selling Viagra. I was the worst thing Mencken could imagine. I was hocking boner pills.
Relax. F. Scott Fitzgerald would’ve done the same thing.
There’s no moral here. I became a pharmaceutical writer out of necessity. Fitzgerald, Huxley, and Faulkner went to Hollywood. They drank and did chemicals. I sold little blue pills to limp dicks. We all disgusted our mentors in our own way. So what? We still made more than Poe.
Running The Circus From The Monkey Cage
You probably want some advice about writing at this point. I’ll start with irony. Many years ago, I wrote a very successful campaign for one of the biggest jewellers in Canada. It was so successful, the agency doubled its billings. Instead of basking in my glory, I left the agency and went broke.
One night, I was so broke, I found myself in a snowstorm without money for the bus. I looked up to the heavens and saw a big billboard sign instead. It said “Fashionable Fingers.” It was my billboard.
There’s surprisingly little irony in Georgia.
This may sound Dickensian, but it’s true. Only in our most desperate moments do we realize how irony makes us writers. Without it, we’d probably be Georgians. There’s very little irony in Georgia. Lots of circuses, though. I have no idea why I find that funny.
Love Is The Delusion That One Woman Differs From Another.
Here’s what every writer — including Mencken — said at first: “How do I make money doing what I love?” When I started writing for money, I had a wonderful advantage. I was still a shoe salesman.
That may sound low-entry to you, but nothing — including a degree in Communications — helped me understand people like selling shoes.
If you’re good at selling, you make money, if you’re not, you don’t. Same goes for the written word. Believe me, firsthand knowledge is better than any book on writing. I also own a lot of shoes.
Who Wants To Live In An Institution?
Only Mencken could sour the institution of marriage. His exact words were: “Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who wants to live in an institution?” He was only married for five years. He lived his whole life in his childhood home across from Union Park in Baltimore. Nobody should stay in Baltimore.
The rest of us need to go somewhere else. To stay in the confines of one town, or state, or country makes us weak. It limits our creativity. It makes us Baltimorians. Even Randy Newman hated the place.
All Human Knowledge Is Moonshine
There may only be ten themes in the world, but nobody remembers nine of them. You can rehash or refurbish just about anything (including Mandalorian, which is nothing more than a cyborg spaghetti western).
That said, the difference between plagiarism and originality is simple: What we remember is almost always paraphrasing.
Conscience Is A Mother-In-Law Whose Visit Never Ends
Craft is conscience. As Hemingway asked at the end of every article or story, “Is this absolutely clear?” He also said, “Sometimes it’s like blasting rock.” Judging from much of the writing here, people would rather plant gardens over rock than blast away.
Not so sick we don’t want to make millions. Just sick enough to know we may may have to embarrass ourselves.
It’s a bad analogy, but we’re in a horrible state of affairs. We write to receive comments. Hopefully good comments. We’ll take bad ones, though. We’re sick puppies when it comes to attention.
Not so sick that we don’t want to make millions. Just sick enough to know we may have to embarrass ourselves to get it.
All writers accept this. Maybe not all, but most.
Whatever you end up earning, at least it’s more than Poe.
Robert Cormack is a satirist, novelist and blogger. His first novel “You Can Lead a Horse to Water (But You Can’t Make It Scuba Dive)” is available online and at most major bookstores. Check out Robert’s other work at robertcormack.net
