Lydi Conklin is now a fiction writer and an assistant professor at Vanderbilt University, but their path there wasn’t a straight line. Before securing a stable academic salary, they spent over a decade surviving almost entirely on the literary circuit.
It was a grueling, nomadic existence.
They moved nine times in twelve years, piecing together a fragile financial safety net using artist residencies with stipends, grants, and short-term fellowships. To bridge the gaps, they took on freelance ghostwriting and writing coaching. It wasn’t glamorous, but it was a calculated risk to buy time. “I was completely sustained, emotionally and for the most part financially, by residencies, fellowships and grants,” they explain.
When your entire livelihood depends on institutional support, you have to be highly strategic about where you apply. Lydi specifically targeted programs and accommodations that removed the daily friction of survival.
“I love residencies that provide food because when I’m deep into writing I don’t really do a great job feeding myself, and it frees up a lot of time not to have to worry about such things,” they say. By eliminating grocery bills and rent, they essentially drove their overhead down to zero, ensuring that every ounce of their energy went into drafting fiction rather than worrying about the next paycheck.
Avoiding a traditional day job came with intense psychological pressure. While the grants provided the physical space to write, the constant uncertainty of living gig-to-gig weighed heavily on them. Looking back, they admit the hardest part wasn’t the lack of money, but the mental tax of the hustle.
“I have learned that anxiety does not help me, and that a scarcity mindset is not a good guiding light,” Lydi shares. Still, they don’t regret the tradeoff. “I am certain I would not have a writing career without grants, fellowships, and residencies,” they admit. “They allowed me to pursue writing and not get sucked into a nine to five where I wouldn’t have the time and capacity to put in the work I personally needed to put in to become the writer I wanted to be”.
If you want the full picture, including deep dive interviews with 100+ writers where I’ve sat down with authors, poets, ghostwriters, and freelance reporters, alongside New York Times bestsellers, Pulitzer finalists, and Academy Award nominees, make sure you subscribe to How I Make Money Writing.
No Comments