How to make a living as a writer

Where the money I earned last year actually came from

Happy Easter Monday everyone! I hope you’ve had a lovely long weekend full of egg hunts and simnel cake…

This week’s post was inspired by an article I recently read by

Katie Hale

. In it she looked at the breakdown of how she made a living as a writer in the last financial year.

It made me curious about how my own income was split so I decided to re-learn (google) how to make a pie chart, and find out.

The results really surprised me. I thought I knew roughly what proportion of my income came from all of the different work I do - writing, events, editing/mentoring, print sales and substack but it turns out I was completely wrong.

In this post I’ll share the breakdown of my income from the last financial year to show you how I currently make a living as a writer. I’ll also explain more about each income strand and the changes I’m going to make now I’ve seen the results of the pie chart…