this article is important... my last full-time jobs were call-centre for minimum wage & "marketing" in a start-up environment that made me ill with stress for about £5k a less yearly (i had to quite that one 3 months in because i was falling asleep at my desk from fatigue) https://twitter.com/hkatewilliams/status/1252549566869786625

i've been unable to find stable part-time work since then and have done some freelance stuff from home and sold some poetry for small amounts of money. i guess in some ways that makes me almost a full-time writer, but really i'm just struggling with fatigue.

my partner is a teacher so he can support me in terms of food/rent, but i have no real financial independence. even the relatively small advance amounts referred to in this article seem like A Lot to me. even though in many ways i'm lucky and stable. so...

also, doing full-time call-centre work made it almost impossible for me to read, let alone write. having a professional job you can write alongside is its own privilege, even as it seems much less privileged than being able to write full-time.

this thread will probably self-destruct soon bc i don't really like talking about this stuff publicly. this article is good but it also made me feel sad that a £28k a year media job to write alongside for someone who's sold a novel is seen as the less good situation