The Draftsman Writing Column: Session 7, Fiction or Non-fiction?

For this column the great debate of what field to write in will be examined. As I write this piece, I can say that I've had a taste of both, with no successes in fiction, and many small ones in non-fiction.

Writing fiction has its own rewards; sometimes you can get more success and notoriety with it. However, non-fiction is a far easier field to write and earn an income.

I write for a newspaper so I am forced to write a good amount of non-fiction, which has taught me many of the basics of how to make a story short and interesting. I applied what I learned to write for associated content, and I've had some minor successes with it. I'm not going to get rich writing for AC, but it's a good way to get some exposure for my writing and earn some quick cash.

Quick cash can rarely be made writing fiction. A writer has to find hundreds of hours to finish a novel and a fraction of that for a short story. Remember though, little money can be made writing short stories; it's novels that get major pay, unless you get a short published in a major publisher like The New Yorker, Glimmer Train, The Sun, or even Zoetrope.

Also remember that the average novelist makes about $5,000, and many are lucky to even get published. The statistics for the novelists who see print has pushed me away from my dreams many times - 1 in 6,000 novels are published.

Non-fiction is a different field and the chances of success are much higher. Yet I have tried in vain to get articles published online besides AC. The real money is in print, writing for magazines like Reader's Digest. It's easier to get that big break with a non-fiction article, as it can be written much faster than a novel. You could write twenty non-fiction articles or more in the time it takes to get that novel publishable. There is a good chance most of your articles will be declined, but you can send them somewhere else and keep putting together more articles. Soon, the sheer weight of continuously writing will lead to breaks. You can't put together twenty novels in a year. You send one out, write a second, and just hope you can get something out there. Then the writer has to market the work before it goes out of print.