I’m often approached by parents or grandparents of children who’ve shown a talent for writing. They ask how a child can learn to be a writer. Or sometimes a person going through a mid-life job change will ask my advice about going back to college to pursue a long-deferred writing dream.

I have to tell them the truth: learning to write is hard — and earning money from writing is way harder.

I’m not saying certain types of writing can’t be immediately lucrative — “content providers” can find careers in advertising and various tech fields — but that’s usually not what the doting grand/parents or career-changers are thinking. They might be imagining plays or screenplays, or even journalism — a fast-fading profession too — but mostly they’re thinking memoir and novels.

But writing book-length narrative is one of the toughest ways to earn a living — and it’s getting tougher all the time. The average book advance from a traditional publisher is less than half of what it was twenty years ago. And even though some self-publishers make a good living, almost all writers need day jobs.