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I don鈥檛 mind receiving these queries 鈥� I myself depended on the time and generosity of older writers when I was in my early 20s 鈥� but I鈥檓 unsure how to answer them. There鈥檚 that old adage that says success is one per cent inspiration, 99 per cent perspiration. In my experience, publishing a novel is one per cent inspiration, nine per cent perspiration, and 90 per cent rent control.

I started writing what would become the first draft of “Good Girl,” a comedy about a young woman with a panic disorder trying to find guidance through politics and sex, in the fall of 2016 when I was 26. At that time, I had already been working for a decade as a professional-ish writer聽(having started as a teen blogger). After graduating from a 海角社区官网university in 2012, I wasn鈥檛 able to find a salaried job in media, but I was a busy freelancer. I wrote articles for magazines whose print rates had not budged since the ‘90s, mined whatever traumas I could to sell overly personal essays at $50 a pop for voice-y millennial websites, and wrote for legacy media outlets that would take six months to a year to pay an invoice. Occasionally, I would get a lucrative copywriting gig that would subsidize my lifestyle for months, before the advent of A.I.

And I worked several odd jobs: at a candy store, a bakery, a cafe, several bookstores. I was never paid much more than minimum wage.

I had no stability, no benefits, no savings account. But what I did have, after bouncing around apartments with both friends and Craigslist strangers, was a rent-controlled first-floor apartment of a Victorian house in Kensington Market that I moved into with a friend-of-a-friend in 2015.

The so-called 鈥渢wo bedrooms鈥� were really a closet-less bedroom and den, separated by glass doors and curtains, but the lack of privacy seemed worth the tradeoff. For my half, I paid $750 a month, including utilities. Between part-time retail work and freelancing, I could make enough聽to cover my rent and my groceries. With the flexibility and leftover time this afforded me, I did two things: I worked on my own passion projects, and I went out.听

I went to magazine launches, readings, and other literary events, as well as art openings, punk shows, and lecture series. I crashed after parties, hung out at indie bookstores like it was my full-time job, and often skipped dinner in order to dine on the free cheese cubes at book events.听

Living in a city may not be a necessity for every artist, but it was for me.

It was at these events that I did what might cynically be described as 鈥渘etworking鈥� but what I like to think of as building community. I made friends with other aspiring artists and writers, and we collaborated on passion projects, shared our first drafts for feedback, recommended each other for jobs, and showed up to each other鈥檚 events.听

A lot of my early work was terrible, and a lot of the work I consumed by other writers was terrible, because in order to produce anything of note you have to first produce a lot of garbage. I got better because I had the time, space, and community to grow as a writer.听

I met my first agent because she liked the work I was producing at The Hairpin, a long-since defunct women鈥檚 blog. And I met the two women who would go on to start Flying Books at two different literary parties; I would work with them both in various capacities before they heard that I had a novel in progress, and asked if they could read a draft.听

When I signed my book deal with Flying Books in 2019, my advance was $1,500, paid out in three installments聽over three years. Perhaps my agent could have negotiated a higher fee for me at a bigger publishing house, but I badly wanted to work with Flying Books because I knew the editors would聽help me shape my mess of a draft into the novel I wanted it to become.听

It was a risk I could take because, frankly, I could afford to.

By the time my novel was published in Canada in 2022, my rent was still only $790 a month. Market rent at the time for a room in a two-bedroom .听

I鈥檓 very proud of my novel. It has not brought me financial stability (I never expected it to), but I was able to put out a book I liked, on my own terms. When I was stuck creatively, I would visit the AGO, or go to the movies, or do all the indulgent, meandering activities that are necessary for the creative development of a project. My novel also served as something tangible that I could point to and say, 鈥淵es, I鈥檓 a writer,鈥� no matter where else my career would take me.听

But reaching this point is now considered a luxury for any artist starting out today.

Young people increasingly cannot afford rent in Toronto, even while splitting the costs with roommates. Those who manage it are often working multiple jobs, with little time leftover to enjoy the cultural community a city offers or to work on their art.听

I was a child when the federal government all but stopped building social housing in the early 1990s, leaving the private market to pick up the slack, but I鈥檝e witnessed a lot of changes during my decade living in Kensington Market. In 2018, while I was finishing the first draft of my novel, Doug Ford鈥檚 Ontario government ended rent control for all new builds. Now, as the city adds desperately needed rental housing stock, tenants are being displaced as rent-controlled apartments like mine聽 units.

In central Toronto, a two-bedroom apartment built after 2000 has an (compared to $2,323 for apartments built before 1960), meaning that even splitting the cost with a roommate would require each tenant to make an average pre-tax salary of $60,000, in keeping with CMHC鈥檚 affordability guidelines.

Decades of all levels of government treating housing as an investment instead of something to live in means that cities have increasingly become playgrounds for the wealthy at the expense of everyone else. Those who are able to make passive income off of housing 鈥� whether as speculative investors or Airbnb hosts 鈥� have financially benefited from the vibrancy that artists bring to a neighbourhood, while these same artists are working multiple jobs to subsidize the lifestyles of the rich.听

In my early 30s, as my roommate was planning to move in with her partner, I began to seriously look for a full-time job. I knew that affordable housing allowed me to write my novel, and I wanted as many other people as possible to have such opportunities. In the spring of 2024, I accepted a job as the communications co-ordinator for a small non-profit working toward a more equitable Toronto, which includes housing affordability.听

Then, in the fall of 2024, I received a royalty payment for my novel. I had at that point been living in the same apartment for the same nine years. With my new job, I was able to afford the full rent on my own (though should I ever get evicted, I would not be able to afford to live in a market rate apartment in the city on my salary). I love living in Kensington Market and I hope I never have to leave.

I took my royalty payment and used it to buy a bond in the , a community-led, non-profit organization that has been purchasing residential and commercial properties in the neighbourhood to keep them affordable.

I鈥檝e watched too many working artists get renovicted, demovicted, or otherwise priced out of the city. I don鈥檛 want to live in a world where the only people who can afford to work as artists are those who are supported by generational wealth or by rich partners. I want art produced by people from all backgrounds, all points of view, and all styles. I want people to have space to make mediocre art with no commercial value, because that鈥檚 a mandatory stepping stone on the path to making imaginative, transformative, life-affirming art. And I want those readers who think my novel sucked (you鈥檙e wrong but you鈥檙e entitled to your opinion) to have books by lots of different writers available to them.

My cheap rent in the Market allowed me to write my novel. The least I could do was take the profits from my book and put it towards creating similar opportunities for the next wave of young 海角社区官网writers.

Anna Fitzpatrick is a writer living in聽Toronto. She is the author of the novel, Good Girl (Flying Books), and the children’s book, Margot and the Moon Landing (Annick Press).