Do you write for love or money?
Happy Friday
For years, I didn’t write online. I wrote by hand, on sheets of loose leaf paper.
I wrote about the squeegee kids in Toronto and I wrote the recurring nightmare I kept having night after night for years until I didn’t even want to go to bed anymore. Amazingly, when I wrote that stupid thing out in words, it finally stopped.
Darn shame that didn’t work for what I heard in the graveyard that one day because I still can’t get it out of my head, no matter how much time passes and writing it didn’t make it stop. Some things you just can’t get out of your head.
Beside my desk, there’s a stack of loose leaf around 7 inches high. Easily thousands of sheets. Essays and musings. I don’t know why I keep it. Maybe I’ll go through it one day. Sometimes I look at it and feel like I’m drowning in words.
When Dad was dying, I started writing online. I don’t know why, really. I guess I needed someone to hear me, uninterrupted. That’s the trouble with conversation. Try telling someone what’s in your head and they interrupt with opinions and questions until you don’t want to share it anymore. Maybe that’s just me.
Then the site I was writing at died. Back to paper, until I found Medium. There was no partner program when I started, so everyone wrote for free.
After the partner program started, and writers were earning money for their writing, someone posted a story with the title “Do You Write For Love Or Money?”
The author said he thinks money is a way to grade one’s work. Wow, the comments got heated. Personally, I think it’s a dumb question. Know why?
Because people who have no interest or desire in writing — don’t. lol.
Which, by process of elimination means that everyone who does write either loves it or is compelled to. I’m not sure they’re the same, but I think they can coexist.
Sometimes I write because I love it. Other times, I write to sooth the savage beast. I write because I don’t like the slow descent into madness that inevitably happens when I go too long without writing. I have always written.
The money is the cherry on top. My best story paid a handsome 3 figures. My worst paid me 02 cents. That one was truly my two cents worth. Too funny.
Who wouldn’t prefer the former to the latter? If we’re going to write anyway…
But I don’t think it’s a matter of love vs. money.
I think a better question would be — what makes you stop writing?
We all have those times, don’t we? The times when you just can’t face a blank page or another round of edits, so we flip the bird to the written word. For how long doesn’t even matter. We always come crawling back eventually.
So I’m curious. What makes you struggle to write? What makes you want to throw in the towel, even just for a while? Share?
Why not enjoy another?
“A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity”
― Franz Kafka [Letter to Max Brod, July 5, 1922]
Thanks in advance for clicking the ❤ or leaving a comment. Beats the heck out of feeling like I’m writing to a brick wall.
Thanks for reading, and have a great weekend!
xo,
Linda
I expect I'm an outlier on this one. For me, it was a combination of humility and focus. I thought I could manage to learn how to cross oceans on my boat AND write. Not writing leads to some angst for sure. The ocean can be very unforgiving so I decided to focus on preparing the boat....and me. Maybe I'll be a better writer as a result? In the meantime, I read and humbly try to learn from others. The ocean and the keyboard can teach humility I guess.
I find writing to be the most painful thing I do, and yet I am compelled. Must be a form of masochism. I write mainly in my head with perfect sentences, clever wording, impeccable organization...and then I face the keyboard and bleed.