Interview #212: How Kerry Donoghue Makes Money Writing

Kerry Donoghue spent fourteen years writing her debut short story collection, MOUTH, before it was published by Unsolicited Press in 2025. After spending her early career cycling through various jobs, including stints as a stadium vendor and an apartment janitor, she realized the constant hustle was actively draining her creative energy. Today, she works as a senior UX content designer in the Bay Area, leveraging the medical benefits and predictable schedule of a corporate role to protect her creative space.

In this interview, Kerry discusses balancing those two worlds, contrasting the financial security of her corporate career with the $1,000 she earned during the first year of her debut collection. She explains how living in a haunted backyard shed helped her save enough money to move and secure a job that paid for her MFA, and walks through the logistics of budgeting three dollars per submission to literary magazines. If you want a practical look at funding a creative life and managing your time alongside a day job, this one’s for you.

• What you do: Senior content designer during the day, fiction writer at night.

• Years writing professionally: 20+.

• Earnings range: $120,000s (for my job as a corporate content designer) + $1,000 (my first-year earnings for MOUTH).

💰 Writing is solitary work, but talking about the finances doesn’t have to be. Our archive is now 200+ honest conversations deep, breaking down book advances, day jobs, and real numbers from writers across every genre and stage of the game. Upgrade your subscription to unlock the library and read how they make it work.

No contest—my day job is my moneymaker. I work as a senior UX content designer and my current salary is in the $120,000s, which is how I pay for medical bills, childcare, clothing, and groceries. And it’s how I pay my future self through a 401k. Since I work remotely, I don’t have any commuting expenses, and I squirrel away PTO (along with credit card points) to fund my book promo travel.

I spent years fumbling through a variety of roles (Halloween costume coordinator, apartment janitor, Dippin’ Dots stadium vendor), but realized the constant hustle for temporary gigs was eating up my creative energy. To keep the creative fires stoked, my brain needs three things from a job: 1) the stability of a bi-weekly paycheck, 2) an industry with rigid creative parameters, and 3) a role that won’t deplete my personal creativity after a full day’s work. Also: health insurance. Working a 9-5 gives me that consistency and provides the practical scaffolding that holds up my creative writing practice.

Another huge consideration is that I live in the Bay Area, with all its big Gold Rush vibes, except now A.I. is the new gold. My husband and I both work full-time corporate jobs, which is how we afford living here. But I’ve been able to piecemeal a paying writing career by thinking outside the box.

When I first moved here in 2005, I lived in my friend’s backyard garden shed in San Mateo. No heat, no bathroom or kitchen (though I could use the ones in the main house), only $250 a month. Surprisingly roomy, definitely haunted. But living there helped me save enough money to move to San Francisco, where I edited an academic journal at a local university. There, they had an employee tuition remission program that’d pay for my schooling after four years of employment if I was accepted into one of their programs, which is how I got my MFA (saving about $30,000). I eventually left that job for corporate copywriting and a raise.

When it comes to my book profits for MOUTH, they’re way less than my salary—it’s wild. I was happy to publish with a small-but-mighty indie press, but, as is the case with many indie publishers, my contract didn’t include a book advance or publicist. (Bonus: I didn’t have to stress about earning out an advance.) My book earnings have been very modest, pulling in about $1,000 last year, which includes books sold through the usual avenues, along with a ton of scrappy handselling at conferences, bookfairs, library events, a book club, Booktok, and readings.