Yesterday’s post was kind of dour. By the end of it I had predicted that in the future nobody would pay for anything, everybody would steal everything, and publishing companies, due to a failing market, would implode upon themselves.<\/p>\n

(Writers have a flair for the dramatic, what can I say.)<\/p>\n

The question left hanging in the air is, if I never made another penny off of writing, would I continue to write? The answer is, of course, yes.<\/p>\n

Back in seventh grade, troubled students were occasionally assigned In School Suspension (ISS). ISS involved sticking kids in a six-foot-tall, three-sided box and pushing it up against a wall, trapping them there for an entire school day. (I guess the administration figured out that the best way to deal with kids skipping school wasn’t to send them home for a few more days!) I was so curious about what spending a day in ISS would be like that I volunteered for it. Our principal, probably equally befuddled and amused, granted my wish.<\/p>\n

Armed with a sack lunch, a stack of books and the heart of an investigative reporter, I spent an entire school day in one of those little boxes. (Come to think of it, it was probably good training; I’ve spent the past fifteen years in a cubicle which, other than a shelf full of toys and a white board, isn’t much different.) The following day I wrote about my experience and submitted it to the school’s newspaper, where it was printed. Although I had written many things before that, that’s the first time I specifically remember feeling that urge to share an experience with others through the written word.<\/p>\n

I’ve done it a million time since then. Whenever people ask me how I find so many things to write about on my blog, I cock my head to the side a little like a dog might and wonder, how do people not<\/i> find so many things to write about? I find dozens of things to write about every day! I find so many things to write about every day that I have a hard time keeping up — my mind races faster than my fingers, which have to work overtime to keep up with it. <\/p>\n

Over the past ten or so years I’ve done a lot of writing for a lot of publications and websites, the vast majority of it being gratis<\/i>. In fact, more often than not, the paying gigs turned out to be a lot less fun. When I first set out to get published, all I cared about was seeing my name in lights — er, ink. I did that. My next goal was to get paid for writing articles. I did that, too. (Getting paid for an article was more important to my ego than my pocketbook.) Both of those things were personal milestones and tremendous thrills, but after I had achieved them they didn’t seem that important. My own goals and needs have changed; now, I just want to write things that people want to read. I want to create great tales and tell great stories. Getting an e-mail from a complete stranger and having them say “I loved your book!” is worth more than any magazine could ever afford to pay me or anybody else. <\/p>\n

Edgar Allen Poe sold “The Raven” (one of the most famous poems ever written) to The American Review for $9. Stolen from Wikipedia: “In part due to its dual printing, “The Raven” made Edgar Allan Poe a household name almost immediately and turned Poe into a national celebrity […] Though it made Poe popular in his day, it did not bring him significant financial success. As he later lamented, “I have made no money. I am as poor now as ever I was in my life — except in hope, which is by no means bankable.”<\/i><\/p>\n

The internet has changed things, of course. It is much easier to get a global audience these days. I have sold books to people all over the world, literally. The downside is the exponentially increasing signal-to-noise ratio. Anyone can self-publish anything, either in print or on the web. While it’s certainly no guarantee of quality, the fact that a book has passed through a major publishing company inherently gives it a certain amount of credibility. <\/p>\n

As a person interested in writing books, it’s hard not to shoot for the stars. Would I like to be the next Stephen King? Would I like to have a book on the New York Times Best-Seller List? Would I like to be able to make a living simply by writing? Of course! The reality is, those things aren’t very likely to happen. They’re not impossible, but the odds are against me and that’s where reality comes in. The reality is, I may never write a best seller. The reality is, my next book probably won’t sell a million copies (or perhaps even a thousand). The reality is, long after he was famous, Mark Twain filed for bankruptcy. <\/p>\n

So, will I continue to write books? Yes. No matter what, I will write. Some of my books, I will try to sell. Some of them I will give away for free. Some of them I’m going to post on my website and ask people to pay what they think they’re worth. Some of them I have completely bizarre plans for. Some of them … I don’t know what I’m going to do with yet. <\/p>\n

What I do know is this: I write for you, but mostly, I write for me — and I’ll be writing for the both of us for a long time to come, paychecks or not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday’s post was kind of dour. By the end of it I had predicted that in the future nobody would pay for anything, everybody would steal everything, and publishing companies, due to a failing market, would implode upon themselves. (Writers have a flair for the dramatic, what can I say.) The question left hanging in the air is, if I never made another penny off of writing, would I continue to write? The answer is, of course, yes. Back in seventh grade, troubled students were occasionally assigned In School Suspension (ISS). ISS involved sticking kids in a six-foot-tall, three-sided box… (read more)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1468\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}