Be a rich and famous author

Writing for a living does not necessarily bring the rewards of financial security. One great bestseller will just about do it. But maybe I’d like to be rich, famous and reclusive. I wonder if that’s possible.

Becoming is a rich and famous author is a specification of the overall “write for a living” goal I saw floating around here. I don’t want to write for a living, I already do that. I want to write one great bestseller that takes care of my material needs for all time. Then I can get serious about goofing off, right? You know it.

AS I wrote over here, I am a professional writer. I’m an editor of a twice weekly newspaper. I have reviewed videogames for professional magazines. I have spent considerable time as a technical writer. These are all part of “Writing for a Living.”

But what I really want to do is “Be a rich and famous author.” This is a totally different goal than simply “writing for a living.”

In fact, In some ways, I think the goal “write for a living” is not the same thing as from “Be a rich and famous author” because I use up most of my creative energies writing for work, rather than writing for potential publication.

Regardless.

Writing for a Living is a laudable goal. I hope it’s something you really want because it’s not all telling stories and being creative. A lot of writing for a living involves getting yelled at for proofing mistakes and missed communication by your superiors, and talking to engineers who, when asked who will use this latest feature in the widget you have to write a press release about will say, “Everybody!” and also this sentence is totally too long.

Writers write, they say. I think there is a lot of truth to that, but it’s just not realistic. Writers have to live lives too, otherwise they’ve nothing to write about.