In this week’s episode, I take a look at five potential problems to consider before becoming a full-time writer.
This coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobooks in The Shield War series, (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store:
FALLSHIELD
The coupon code is valid through October 19, 2026. So if you need a new audiobook this fall, we’ve got you covered!
TRANSCRIPT
00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates
Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 323 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is October 2nd, 2026, and today I am discussing five things to consider before becoming a full-time writer. We will start off with Coupon of the Week and then a progress update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. This week’s coupon code will get you 50% off all the audiobooks in The Shield War series (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store. That coupon code is FALLSHIELD. As always, the coupon code and the link to my Payhip store will be included in the show notes for this episode. The coupon code is valid through October the 19th, 2026, so if you need a new audiobook this fall, we have got you covered.
Now let’s move on to an update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. It was not as productive a week as I hoped. There’s a lot going on and I went onto my porch and my foot went through a deck board, so I will be buying lumber later today. Despite that, I am up to 59,000 words of Elven-Warlock, which I think puts me about three quarters, maybe 70% of the way through. I’m very much hoping I can finish it this coming week, if all goes well.
My secondary project right now is Blade of Rifts, which will be the seventh book in the Blades of Ruin epic fantasy series. I am currently 6,500 words in it, so that’ll take over as my main project once Elven-Warlock is complete.
In audiobook news, some exciting news: Cloak of Summoning is out. You can get it at Audible, Amazon, Apple Books, and as of right now, Google Play, Kobo, and my own Payhip store. It went live a lot faster than I anticipated, which is a good thing, so the links to the various stores are still going live, but you should be able to get it at all your favorite audiobook stores before too much longer. So that is where I’m at on my current audiobook, publishing, writing, and ebook projects.
00:02:02 Main Topic: Things to Consider Before Becoming a Full-Time Writer
So with all that in mind, let’s now proceed to our main topic. So as of September 2026, I have now been a full-time writer for 10 years. And in honor of that, I thought I would do an episode today on five things you should consider before becoming a full-time writer. First of all, I am so thankful for all of my readers and all my listeners who make it possible for me to write full-time and even hire on other people as needed, like my transcriptionist, my narrators, and my accountant who all do things that I would not be able to do by myself.
I’m very grateful to them and more importantly, I am very grateful to all of you who have read the ebooks and listened to the audiobooks because you make all of this possible. So with that in mind, here are five things you should consider before going full-time as a writer.
#1: Your larger financial picture
In his memoir Sometimes the Magic Works, epic fantasy author Terry Brooks recounted a conversation he had with his editor, the legendary Lester Del Rey, told him that before he would even consider going full-time, he needed to make sure he had a year’s worth of salary in the bank and since Terry Brooks (before he became a full-time writer) was a lawyer, that was a significant amount. So he did that and he decided it was time to start thinking about writing full-time. This is something that’s going to be unique for everyone and everyone’s situation is different.
Before you consider writing full-time, you need to think about your larger financial picture. This is a decision that shouldn’t be made from the heart, but from the brain and specifically with a spreadsheet in mind. Since changing jobs is a very heavily financial decision, you need to take a hard look at your finances. Are you carrying a significant amount of debt such as student loan debt, housing debt, medical debt? Do you owe a lot of money on your car or cars? Things of that nature. Do you have large fixed expenses every single month that you have to meet such as rent, car payments, student loan payments, insurance payments, and so forth? Do you live in a high cost of living area? Are you financially responsible for children or other relatives? Do these children have medical conditions that require a lot of care and therefore are expensive?
As I always mention when I talk about financial and legal stuff, I am not a lawyer and I am not a financial planner. You obtain legal advice by hiring a lawyer licensed to practice in your jurisdiction and you obtain financial advice by hiring a licensed financial planner. That said, it might be wise to visit a fee-based financial planner to review your financial health in detail before making the decision to become a full-time writer.
#2: Income Over Time
On a related note, you need to have a pretty established track record as a writer to be able to make the jump to full-time. One good month or even a good year is not generally a sign that it’s time. You need to see how things do in the aggregate across time. I’ve mentioned before that I only became a full-time writer in 2016 and I’d been publishing since 2011 at that point, and I had been making a pretty consistent income for some time, but I never wanted to quit my full-time job until I needed to do so for family reasons (when I moved to another state in 2016) and decided to try making a go at being a full-time writer since I thought I could pull it off.
In that case, the decision was kind of made for me, but at that point I had been making enough income that I was confident I would be able to cover my expenses with full-time writing. Most writers experience a period of peak earnings and things level out. For example, J.K. Rowling and Stephen King aren’t selling as much as they were at their peak decades ago. Granted, I think most writers would be very, very, very happy to have J.K. Rowling and Stephen King’s current level of earnings, but I think it’s fair to say Harry Potter is not selling as well as it was during the peak of Harry Potter’s popularity and Stephen King’s books aren’t selling as much as they did during his peak when he was writing big books like It and Salem’s Lot and so forth.
That is even true for myself. My best year of writing ever in terms of finances was 2017 when I finished the Frostborn series and started the Sevenfold Sword series, and I’ve never had a year quite as good as that one. It’s been up and down since then. I’ve never had a year bad enough where I thought I need to quit writing and think about doing something else, which is a good thing for which I’m very grateful. But conversely, I’ve never had a year as good as 2017. So the point of this is you can’t base the calculation to go full-time off of your peak income because it’s likely that income will level out over time. I’d say in 2026, I’m probably going to do about 63% gross of what I did in 2017, which is still a very good year, but it’s nowhere near approaching my best year. So obviously I would not have based my calculation to go full-time off my best year, and I don’t think you should do that as well.
#3: Healthcare Costs
I’ve heard people say the US has a very bad healthcare system. I don’t think that’s true. What I think is more accurate to say is that the US has a good healthcare system, but our way of paying for it and financing it is very bad. If you look throughout American history, the United States as a country tends to have this unfortunate genius for taking the worst aspects of capitalism and combining it with the worst aspects of socialism in certain cases and unfortunately, I think that what has happened with how we pay for our healthcare system.
Now, granted, you can hear horror stories about every country’s healthcare system. It’s not too hard to find horror stories about the NHS in the UK or the Canadian healthcare system, but generally it is a good deal less expensive than it is in the United States, even if you’re paying more in taxes. A joke I’ve heard frequently in the last few years is that if you break your arm in the US, you can see a doctor in the same day, but it will cost you $55,000. In the UK, you can see the doctor for free, but he won’t be able to see you for nine months. In Canada, you can see the doctor the same day and he’ll just tell you to kill yourself. Now, obviously this is exaggerated for comedic effect, but there is an element of truth to the excesses of each individual healthcare system. Since I’m based in the US, I will talk about this from a US-based perspective.
In the US, if you’re a full-time self-employed person, the best possible outcome for you is if your spouse or partner is employed full-time and you can get on their healthcare plan because that will be the most cost-effective for you. If that is not an option and you need health insurance, you will need to go on the healthcare market and enroll in a plan that is both much more expensive and much more limited than the typical employer provided plan. These plans are very geographically limited to a specific state or region, usually don’t cover as many services, cost an enormous amount of money, and still require a hefty deductible beyond the monthly premium. And this is just for one person or two people! If children and multiple family members get involved, the costs just skyrocket swiftly.
If you live in the US, you will need to spend a lot of time thinking carefully about health insurance, especially if you or anyone in your family has significant healthcare needs or needs very specific prescriptions or medical services. To be honest, I don’t think this is something that’s going to get fixed anytime soon or in our lifetimes, even maybe for example, Daylight Savings Time, getting rid of that is very popular, but the government can’t even get itself together to do that, let alone something serious like trying to reduce the spiraling costs of healthcare.
So when it comes down to it, it’s impossible to give advice in the situation because everyone’s situation is different. You’ll have to look very carefully at your income, at your current state of health and at the state of health for your family and whether or not you’ll be able to afford a healthcare plan and whether or not it might not just make sense to work full-time, go on your employer’s healthcare, and then write part-time on the side. There’s nothing wrong with that. Anthony Trollope did that for his entire career, and there are many other writers who have written successfully while pursuing full-time jobs.
#4: Self-Employment Taxes
Now onto our next point. I know I said this was going to be six points, but as I looked at my notes here, I realized there was something else important that I needed to address, and that is point four, self-employment taxes.
Once again, I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice, and I am not an accountant or a financial planner, and this is not financial advice. If you want actual advice, hire someone qualified to give advice in your jurisdiction. However, if you are going full-time, especially in the United States, you have to keep in mind that your tax situation is going to change drastically. Most salaried or wage employees in the United States don’t, to be blunt, think about taxes all that much because federal tax, state tax, Social Security tax, and Medicare tax is all automatically deducted from their paychecks when they receive their paychecks. Depending on how the employer structure things, when they fill out their tax form at the end of the year, they may or may not get a refund depending on if they take the standard deduction or if they have childcare deductions or there are big life events like receiving an inheritance or home repairs or moving or that kind of thing. So for the vast majority of salaried and wage paid employees in the United States, your employer essentially handles paying most of your taxes for you by automatically deducting them from your paycheck.
When you are self-employed, that is very different because you personally are responsible for paying all your taxes. And not to be too glib, Uncle Sam really does not like the self-employed because the self-employed tax rate is much higher than it is for any salaried employees or paid on wage employees. The way most full-time writers get around this is essentially starting a company with themselves as the sole owner-employee, most likely the CEO, and then the company pays them a salary from which their federal, state, Social Security, and Medicare taxes get deducted, and that lets them be taxed at the corporate tax rate, which is in fact much lower than the self-employment tax rate.
Now remember, you will need to check with an accountant for the specific rules for your jurisdiction and whatever country you live in, but if you do go full-time, it would be very, very, very, very advantageous to you to talk to an accountant who is familiar with this kind of thing and the kind of a tax structure you can create for yourself where you’re not paying more in taxes than you necessarily have to.
Obviously, you want to pay whatever amount of taxes you are legally obligated to pay. However, the amount of taxes you are legally obligated to pay can vary quite a bit on how you structure your business. So that is something else to keep in mind if you write full-time, it is your tax situation and it would be very beneficial of you to talk to an accountant and perhaps to a financial planner for the best options available for you and your writing business.
#5: Self-discipline
This one is tricky because self-discipline is hard and you can get good advice for taxes and accountants and healthcare. It’s harder to get good advice for self-discipline since so much of it comes down to the inner self. To be frank, many people do not have the self-discipline to write and work for hours a day without someone monitoring their progress or giving them deadlines. It takes a significant amount of self-discipline to be able to write full-time, and many people struggle with that transition. For me, it was not a difficult transition, partly for two reasons. One, because I’ve been very disciplined about my writing already for the past several years by writing during my lunch break and a little bit in the morning and at night after dinner. For the second reason, it was more prosaic. I knew that if I didn’t get my writing done, I would not be able to publish my books; I would run out of money and then I would starve and die. So that makes for a very good motivation to get a lot of writing done.
For many people, I think it comes down to knowing yourself and not lying to yourself about what your personality is like, what your capabilities are. If you know you’re a person who requires a lot of external accountability, you can set up systems for that, like you put a whiteboard in your kitchen where you write down the amount of words you have written that day and give permission to your family to heckle you if you don’t get those words written or a writer support group or posting online to your social media fans that you got your words written that day.
It basically boils down to knowing your strengths and weaknesses and making sure that you have the self-discipline to work without a boss looking over your shoulder. If you are the kind of person who needs a boss looking over your shoulder to get anything done, you will have to develop a system to make yourself work.
#6: Dream versus reality
I think many people have a very romanticized view of what the life of a full-time writer is like, like they imagine many vacations and leisurely writing in cozy cafes, and the reality usually isn’t that glamorous and much more prosaic. To generate the sales needed for a full-time income, you’re still probably putting in full-time hours and most likely more than the standard 40 hours a week in the US work week.
There’s a lot of grunt work essentially involved with writing that gets ignored in the glamorous view of it, like uploading files, preparing quarterly taxes, answering emails, working with your subcontractors like narrators and the transcriptionist, adjusting ads, setting up ads, making all the various needed changes for a sales promotion, keeping track of your finances, making sure your spending is lower than your finances, and so on and so forth.
All these administrative tasks can quickly eat up the bulk of the day, especially if they’re combined with what I call writing adjacent tasks like posting to social media, doing research, and experimenting with cover images. It’s not a standard nine to five job. It’s a lot more like being the owner of a small business where success or failure ultimately rests on you. I frequently need to check in on things outside of standard work hours or while on vacation and speaking of vacations, they aren’t quite as enjoyable when vacation days aren’t being provided by an employer and you’re not actually being paid for them because the entire time there’s this little voice in your head reminding you that the longer you go without getting any work done, the less your income is going to be. Significant travel and vacations can really cut into your earnings.
On a mental health note, I should say that while this isn’t something I personally have struggled with, I know many writers do. As I found when I was shopping for life insurance, writers are one of the hardest professions to insure due to their high rates of mental illness and substance abuse. About the same time I was shopping for life insurance, I had to have some trees trimmed, and I realized that the guy in the tree with the chainsaw would have an easier time getting life insurance than I would, a writer who spends most of his time sitting in a chair and pressing buttons. That is how common mental illness is among writers.
It can take an extremely mentally healthy person to be their own boss, work for an unpredictable and fluctuating income, face a fair amount of criticism, and be alone for most working hours in an unstructured environment. If you already struggle with your mental health and wellbeing, you need to think very carefully about how being a full-time writer might impact you. You might want to talk to your doctors, mental health professionals, and family members about this specifically [before] moving forward. Now, I realize that all this when you add it up sounds a bit bleak, but it’s really not, at least not for me.
I very much enjoy what I do and consider myself very blessed and fortunate that I get to do what I do. Indie publishing has made it possible for many more people to become full-time writers or write part-time and generate income while carrying out other commitments. It’s a fantastic opportunity that seemed unthinkable as recently as 15 years ago for most writers. It’s a great job, and if I had to go back and do it all over again, I still would. That said, making the transition to being a full-time writer requires careful thought about how it impacts you, your family, and your finances. So if you are in a position where you are considering becoming a full-time writer, I hope these tips will help guide your planning process. In the meantime, unrelated [to] full-time writing, I now have to go buy lumber to fix that porch board.
Thank you all for listening to the Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes on https://thepulpwritershow.com, often with transcripts. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy, and we’ll see you all next week.
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