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One of the main reasons I decided to go to journalism school was so I could earn a living as a writer. The romantic image of the “starving writer” never appealed to me. The things I wanted to enjoy in life—a nice enough home, up-to-date clothes, travel—cost money.

When I started on my academic journey toward a master’s degree—in Boston, in 1982, in Emerson College’s professional writing and publishing program—I also launched a sort of parallel career: waiter, “word processor” and jack-of-many-trades.

Serving plates of scrod and bowls of prize-winning clam chowder at Legal Sea Foods, in Park Square, was the first time I supported my growing writing “habit” by doing something else to earn my “bread-and-butter.”

After moving to Chicago in the dead of winter 1985, I continued waitering and temping while I was working on my master’s in journalism at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism. It was a short bike ride from my studio apartment in Chicago’s Lake View East section to The Fallen Angel, the hamburger joint I worked in.

After finishing my program, I moved to Washington, DC. By day I was the staff writer-editor for a forest products trade association.

By night—and sometimes even during the work day when I could sneak it in—I’d conduct interviews for the features and profiles I was writing for Washington City Paper and the Washington Blade, respectively the city’s alternative and gay weeklies.

This is when I started focusing on HIV-AIDS. My first feature for City Paper was a cover story called “The Survivors” about men whose partners had died from AIDS. In 1986 it was a radical notion that gay men grieved their dead partners even without the social support that widowers and widows take for granted.

I’d found my reporting niche, and outlets that let me express my growing passion.

In 1988 I parlayed my freelance work into a full-time staff position as writer/publicist for the National AIDS Network, a coalition of community-based AIDS service organizations across the country. I got to interview people across the U.S. who were creating new programs and agencies to serve the needs of people with HIV/AIDS. I wrote for and edited a weekly and quarterly newsletter, gave interviews to the news media, and wrote speeches and journal articles for our director. The highlight of my 15 months at NAN was traveling to Stockholm, to report on the Third International Conference on AIDS in 1988.

When I was laid off in early 1989, I went back to waitering and temp work. I also wrote health stories for Men’s Fitness magazine, pieces about Washington’s charity ball set for a DC magazine, met Mother Teresa, and even got to be the only credentialed American reporter to accompany Princess Diana as she toured “Grandma’s House,” a home in DC for HIV-positive children.

In late 1991 a long-term temp job at the American Psychiatric Association led to freelancing for their newspaper—and then a full-time job organizing AIDS training programs for mental health professionals around the country.

I left the APA in July 1995 to work on my first book, a history of the American AIDS epidemic. I thought I could support myself with consulting and freelance work, essentially by selling my reporting, writing and editing skills (rather than my food service skills and physical stamina, as I did in waitering).

My mother thought I was nuts for leaving a “real” job to do something crazy like write a book. I argued that the book would prove more important to my career than any one particular job.

While I was writing Victory Deferred—between 1995 and 1998—I took on all sorts of freelance and consulting projects to generate income. I even wrote two other books—“works for hire”—to earn money. One, The Art of Fine Cigars (Bulfinch Press/Little Brown, 1996) actually had three printings its first year and sold more copies than any of my other books to date! The other was a history of Washington, DC’s oldest private clubs, the Metropolitan Club, which they commissioned me (and paid me well) to do.

Being the author of a book on AIDS helped me get a higher salary than I’d ever been paid when I was hired in 2001 as senior editor for Family Health International’s AIDS program.

I edited big training books with multiple authors all over the world, hired French translators, graphic designers, printers and CD packagers. I commissioned editors and freelance writers, wrote and managed the content for our much-visited Website. I even traveled to Nigeria and the eastern Caribbean to train my colleagues on how to report and document their work in newsletters and other media.

When I left FHI in early 2004, I formed my own one-man consulting practice—Health & Science Reporting, Inc. I offered my reporting, writing and editing skills to other organizations funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development and other donors to provide public health-related consulting services in the developing world.

I left Washington in 2007, after 22 years there, and actually returned to my hometown of Norwich, Connecticut. After struggling to keep freelance and consulting income coming in, I decided I’d rather earn my bread-and-butter by selling a high-quality “tangible” product and experience than depend on the shrinking fees paid for freelance writing.

I’ve been working to raise the capital I need to open a coffeehouse. I have a business plan that even banks have praised—before explaining why they don’t make loans to start-up businesses. I’ve put my Washington networking skills to good use, getting to know elected officials and the “movers and shakers.” I even ran for the city council in 2009.

I’ve realized that, as with my writing projects (especially books), I’m the “talent,” the one with vision, passion and skills—but not the money guy. I’m good at getting others to share my vision and back my projects. So I’m still working to find investors to back Downtown Joe.

I expect I’ll write until I drop.

I’m now working to revise Victory Deferred for a new 2011 edition. I got a grant from a foundation in New York that is letting me travel to a number of cities to do interviews like those I did in the late nineties for the original book.

It’s funny to look back and realize how, in many ways—some of them painful to remember—I’ve been the “starving writer” I never wanted to be.

But at this point I’d say the glory of doing the work I’ve gotten to do, the chance to write books and see them reviewed in major newspapers, to have my reporting archives housed at the Smithsonian, to be interviewed by NPR and the BBC, to feel I’ve made a contribution by reporting and helping document the AIDS epidemic, makes it worth it.

It doesn’t always pay my bills. But it’s worth it.

NEXT: VICTORY DEFERRED

Bio: John-Manuel Andriote began his writing career in 1983, reviewing books for the Advocate, the national gay and lesbian newsmagazine. After earning a master's degree from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, Andriote built his career in Washington, DC, over the next two decades. He specialized in reporting on the AIDS epidemic, and in 1999 published Victory Deferred: How AIDS Changed Gay Life in America (University of Chicago Press). It was followed by Hot Stuff: A Brief History of Disco (HarperEntertainment, 2001). Andriote is also the author of The Art of Fine Cigars (Bulfinch Press/Little Brown) and a privately published history of Washington's Metropolitan Club. He has written feature articles, commentaries, reviews and profiles for the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and many other publications. Today Andriote lives in Connecticut, and is working on a revised edition of Victory Deferred for publication in 2011, the 30th anniversary of the AIDS epidemic.