I agree that writing is a business. And I will admit I am a person who dreams about writing full time, perhaps it’s only a dream, but that’s my goal. I plan to build my website business as my meal ticket to being able to write full time. So thank you for sharing that detail on how hard it is to make money writing.

I managed to work part time writing for a few months and made about $700 a month writing non-fiction articles. My heart wasn’t in though, as I like fiction better, which is even harder to make money, so thanks for showing me that I have to work really hard to succeed.

Excellent article. I consider myself a creative and also am responsible for doing many of the things you have outlined in the past.

However I am much more responsible now and trying hard to cull those old debts and get my head straight. As of now things are working out quite well.

Thanks,

Forest.

I just sold two books to my publisher. Too many problems with him. I would like to re-write both books and have them published under new titles with a new publisher. Is this legal?

O.o

*whistles*

(Was not here.)

“I’m presently at home full time. I can’t remember the last time I drank alcohol . . .”

I believe that’s one of the flags for a serious drinking problem. You should probably seek professional help if you suffer any more of these blackouts.

;^)

*smiles*
Michele

The rest of them will do writerly things like hanging out at the coffee shop reading the local alternative weekly and paying good bread to attend chronic community center writer’s workshops filled with tweedy, perverted MFA beardos and 60-year-old patchouli-reeking hippie chicks (with names like StarChylde Aquarius) and the whole bleeding lot of them will spend months trying to impress each other discussing new and even more convoluted ways of wringing every bit of overblown nuance out of their friend’s new, trendsetting teenage gothic ninja spy novel.

Many will submit over-the-transom rubbish to magazines, generally along the lines of “a day in the life of my cat as told by my cat.” And then there’s my favorites–the “business” writers who spend half their time churning out generic dreck and the other half sending it out to trade magazine editors with the blanks in the copy filled in with the appropriate noun to describe the audience of the magazine, at least according to a 5-year-old copy of “Writer’s Market.”

My unsolicited advice as a 30-year magazine and book editor to the 95-percenters out there? To put it kindly I’d say that having a computer and MS Word doesn’t make you a writer any more than owning a camera and knowing how to press the shutter release makes you a photographer.

To put it unkindly? Go start a blog–get it out of your system and spare the professionals your talent. Seriously.