Doing one thing isn't enough anymore, apparently.

Multidisciplinary career artists, side hustles, and how tired we are!

I recently read this Substack article called The end of the ‘career author’, which explores the seemingly recent decline of authors who make a living solely off of book deals and royalties—or rather, how they never really existed, and how it has always been a precarious path to pursue. It ends on a positive note about career evolution and how writers should embrace branching out to multiple revenue streams.

I enjoyed the article and thought it had some valuable insights, but I couldn’t help but heave a huge sigh at the end of it. I think a lot of career creatives can relate.

I am technically a multidisciplinary artist—an illustrator and an author—and decent enough to make money from both. Over the past five years, I’ve published five novels. I’ve run and fulfilled a successful Kickstarter. I’ve done covers, character art, and illustration work for indie authors and special edition book boxes. I’ve sold my books directly to readers through my Etsy shop. I’ve even made and sold my own book-related merchandise for a time. I’m actively pursuing traditional publishing and recently got a translation deal for two of my indie books. My eggs have been spread to all the baskets I care to bother with—and after all that, I still qualify for low-income health insurance in my state!

My question to the “branch out” advice is this: Does spreading my eggs even matter if all the baskets have holes in them? And if I only have two arms?!

My extremely outdated business card, circa 2023

Why does everybody need a side hustle these days? Are jobs not paying us or…?

I know that a lot of authors have a 9-5 on top of being an author, which is honestly great, and I commend you for having the energy, especially since I get the impression that publishers want authors who are single-mindedly dedicated to their writing careers and churn out books yearly. It’s a whole job in and of itself, but it certainly doesn’t pay like one.

Even “real” jobs aren’t paying us living wages, which likely explains why having a side-hustle or doing gig-work is so normalized. These days, a 9-5, which is largely viewed as the stable and sensible option, can drop you without prior warning or a severance package.

I went to college for animation, and our education conditioned us to pursue work at animation studios, 9-5 style. But even after getting hired, animation workers are still technically contractors and will be let go after a project wraps up. Wages vary greatly depending on your experience and role. (Stability has never really been in the cards for my chosen career path, I guess.) I got a real 9-5 after college, but subsequently was let go after 11 months without warning (but I did get severance, yay!).

My lay-off hit just before the gen AI disaster that sent working artists into a frenzy. All of a sudden, professional artists/art educators/animation workers were telling us to branch out, make our own projects, and not rely on studios to get work. Suddenly, the 9-5 wasn’t so shiny anymore. I was already indie-publishing and doing freelance illustration during that time, so I just decided to go for it.

Recently, I saw that my boss at my old job no longer worked there, and I wonder if he also got laid off. He was the definition of the jack-of-all-trades career artist; he was juggling a lot and worked super hard. Last I saw, he’s making his own toy/collectible line independently.

So.

Might as well be an independent artist if my future is going to be unstable anyway, right?

I do two whole things, but I’m still not that special

I published my debut novel between junior and senior year of college and republished an illustrated edition for my senior project. It was a jumpstart to my career, as my senior spotlight article puts it. They really gassed me up about it. (Also, if my college is reading, I’m one of the poor alumni, please stop asking me for donations 😔.)

Writing was just a fun side quest at the time; I fully believed I’d be a professional illustrator and do nothing else. But then, I started taking writing more seriously, and publishing novels slowly went from side quest to main quest. I thought combining my art with my writing into ✨illustrated novels✨would be unique enough to make me stand out in the indie market. For a while, it did, until royalties fizzled out. Turns out, my books aren’t immune to falling off, even if they’re fully illustrated!

By virtue of the internet, I learned quickly that I was not the only professional author/illustrator out there. Not only are there writers and illustrators who are cooler than I am, but there are also writer-illustrator-double-threats who are cooler than I am! And they, too, have figured out e-commerce, content creation, and online marketing for optimal reach, which are all skills in and of themselves!

In college, they encourage you to find a way to “stand out” to employers, and even though I was self-employed, I knew I needed to stand out in the wild west that was the attention economy. I already knew I wasn’t the best, but I did take comfort in the fact that I was a competent jack of two trades, and not completely irrelevant, right?

Nope.

Not only is doing one thing not enough, doing two things doesn’t really make me special!

Quality vs quantity

I often wonder if I double down on one discipline and get really, really, really excellent at it, I’ll find more success than if I dabbled in multiple at once. If I went all in on illustration, would I be a better illustrator than I am now? (Yes, obviously.) Would I have clients with bigger budgets? (Yes, obviously.)

There’s something to be said about mastery in one skill, and there are definitely artists who’ve achieved that, like Kim Jung Gi (RIP king), who have found great success built on the merit of their artwork. But not everyone can be a master, and not everyone has that kind of single-minded focus and dedication, including me.

I like to dabble. This is why I do two things.

But this brings me back to the whole “I only have two arms” thing. Because it took SO MUCH EFFORT to get to where I am as an illustrator and writer—competent enough to make them my primary sources of income. Courses were taken. A degree was earned. Money and time were spent on craft books and practicing. It was not easy, cheap, or fast, which kind of sucks, considering how urgent the need for money is.

I’m trying to put myself in the shoes of a creative person just entering the working world. Maybe they’re a freelancer, like me, who got a degree in one thing that conditioned them to have a 9-5. Now AI exists, the job market is oversaturated, lay-offs are happening left and right, and somehow they have to find a way to stand out enough to make money from whatever degree they just earned.

Skill takes resources and time to develop, even for a jack of all trades. When you’re already under pressure and struggling, how can you get good enough at multiple extra disciplines? How good can you possibly get before you run out of time? Is it even worth dabbling when you can niche down and specialize?

When the future seems bleak, when the system shows that hard work doesn’t correlate with rewards, finding a reason to learn, care, and be curious is hard.

Juggling…I don’t know how to do it

Even as a dabbler, I prefer to focus on one thing at a time, especially when it comes to skill development. If I give my all to one discipline, I can’t focus on the other, and I’m sure many can relate.

For the past three weeks, I’ve been knee-deep in developmental edits for my next manuscript that will go on submission. Today, I had to put that down to work on an illustration assignment. (And now that it’s the end of the day, I realize I completely forgot where I was in terms of editing my manuscript, lmao.)

I haven’t been consistent in maintaining or improving my illustration skills for the past two years because I’ve been learning how to write instead. It was hard getting back into drawing, and I’m a little ashamed of how rusty I am, considering how this was my main quest for the longest time. For me, illustration and creative writing drink from the same creative well. If I do one for 3-4 hours, I’m drained for the day. I can’t give my all to both at the same time. I can’t imagine learning another skill (for the sole purpose of monetization) on top of maintaining, levelling up, advertising my existing skills, and on top of life in general.

Some days, I think we’re all doing way too much.

The mythical career artist

I wish the career author were real. I wish we could just be artists of our chosen discipline and have enough to survive simply by creating art.

But even great artists can’t just be artists anymore…they have to sell courses now, apparently 😂.

There was this niche drama last year where a small art YouTuber, Morgue Design, called out creators like Kelsey Rodriguez for scamming artists by selling courses along the lines of “how to earn $40k a month as an artist”, putting big figures in her YouTube thumbnails, and promoting an unrealistic dream. They cite that Kelsey and others like her make the majority of their income from courses and content, not actual art. Therefore, they’re scamming us by telling us we can make money with our art—but only when we buy their courses!

I do watch and follow Kelsey, by the way; she doesn’t hide the fact that she’s primarily a coach/consultant focused on helping and educating creatives about the business side of their art. In my opinion, Kelsey does have valuable things to share, but Morgue was not entirely wrong in their frustrations either. There are a lot of scammy internet courses that give off “selling shovels in the gold rush” vibes. I side-eye every online course these days and make sure the creators have actual teaching credentials before I stop side-eying.

This reminds me of an author—I forget who—who got a six-figure deal one time and subsequently made a course for querying writers, citing her six-figure deal as her credentials. To me, this is the equivalent of making a course on finding a $20 bill on the street on a Tuesday, because she found a $20 bill once on a Tuesday. Also, there are FREE online resources for querying writers from actual industry professionals, just saying!

Some folks are just really good at peddling, which, honestly, is another discipline in and of itself.

Anyway, I think Morgue’s video came from a place of believing the career-artist myth—that artists can simply create art for a living and do nothing else, no marketing, no newsletters, no ecommerce, no social media/content creation, no educating, no branching out to become multidisciplinary to stand out. Maybe we all need to learn what The end of the ‘career author’ revealed: that the career artist was never real, and there has always been more we need to do other than create.

Well, unless you’re a prolific white male writer with a wife.

I’m sad now, lol.

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There is definitely merit to the “branch-out” advice. My indie book royalties have been at an all-time low; I’m lucky to scrape $400 a month on all five of my books these days. Traditional publishing is…what it is. Meanwhile, my freelance illustration work has been very consistent this year. I’m so grateful to be able to fall back on that, because otherwise I’d be cooked.

The horrors persist, but so do artists!