Writing for Myself, Not Money

I spent most of the weekend trying to decide about monetizing my writing. I do this every six months or so. This means thinking about the sorts of books I need to write in order to make a bunch of money. And what qualifies as “a bunch of money” has eroded down to almost nothing over my career as a writer. If I can make, say, $50 on something I enjoyed, then my mood is improved for a month. Whenever I get my annual royalty check for around $200, I take Erica out for a nice dinner. “It’s on me, babe,” I say. Never mind that the book in question took around 1700 hours to write and another 200 to propose, format, revise, and so on. Minimum wage puts the estimated labor value of the book at $14,500 (US), which is at least $13,500 (US) more than I’ve earned in royalties on it.

 

When I find myself wondering about how to boost my writing ROI, I wind up looking at books and watching videos from authors who allegedly have lucrative writing careers. The “make six figures writing e-books” space is saturated with authors who specialize in books about writing for money, so it’s a pretty incestuous genre. And to make matters worse, today you have to sort through hundreds of AI-generated books with identical covers and blurbs. Still, I believe that I’m one insight away from making it big. But then again my audience is typically college professors, and they’re always griping about not being paid enough. 

 

The part of me that wants fame and money through writing is always at war with the part of me that cares about the art. I am reminded of the writers who wrote out of a sense of duty—they wrote because they had to. Flannery O’Connor, who occasionally taught writing at Georgia College in Milledgeville, explained that writers who wanted to “make a killing” would be unable to produce anything worth reading. Or maybe she said that it was a hopeless endeavor. I don’t remember exactly. Amazon tells me that I purchased her collection of essays about writing six years ago, but I can’t find it on my bookshelves. I just spent 20 minutes staring at my library, and now I’m worried that I lent it to my friend Scott before he died.

 

I think O’Connor would agree that writing with profit as the motive is doomed to be uninspired, but maybe that’s just what I think she would have said. Maybe I’m projecting my opinion onto her. So what is it that I do believe?

 

I believe that good writing is also a means of self-actualization. That I must pour myself onto the page without any filter (except for maybe grammar). Write not for others or for money but for myself. That if I can do this sincerely, then readers and money will find me. That’s sort of like what Terry Pratchett said about writing—that the key is to continue improving your craft. If you can do that, then money and fame are inevitable.

 

I do think it is possible to write “how to” books without pandering to my prospective audience—that’s what I have on my writing docket at the moment: a whole bunch of how-to-books. I’ve got one about doing psychological research, one about general education assessment, and one about doing applied classroom research. (You’d think my phone would be ringing off the hook.) The key is to write these books in the style that I would want to read them. Therefore my writing time is sacred. It is a time for me to examine and expose myself, and not a time for me to hustle to make a buck. 

 

Or maybe I’m just rationalizing a job that nets me, at best, around $1.90/hr.