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Write For The Money
- By Ruth Barringham
- Published Friday 10th 2008
- Writing tips
- Unrated
Ruth Barringham
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Some purists will try and tell you that writing is an art form and that all artists should work only for the love and fulfilment that their talent brings them.
But I say that's rubbish. If you want to be a successful and wealthy writer, then you need to write for money. You can pursue a dream of becoming a starving writer living in a garret if you want to, but it's much better to earn a large salary for your work and live comfortably.
This doesn't mean that you shouldn't enjoy writing. On the contrary, writing should be your passion in life. Your writing should be what gets up early in the morning and keeps you up late at night. But you should also be earning a respectable living from your writing.
Being a successful and wealthy writer sounds great but how and where should you begin?
If you don't know what kind of writer you want to be then you can start by trying out all the different kinds of writing. You can try writing short stories, poetry, comedy, scripts, articles, books, novels, copy writing, ghost writing and more.
And you can send your work out to many different magazines, web sites, publishers and other markets. You'll probably receive back a huge avalanche of rejections, but in amongst them all you'll have a few successes.
From these successes you'll be able to see what pays the best and what you enjoy writing.
From this you can figure out your hourly rate.
For instance, say you were paid a fee of $100 for writing a 1,000-word article. Now that $100 may seem like a lot, but if it took you 4 hours to research and write the article, then your hourly rate is only $25.
Now you could improve that rate by rewriting the article from anther angle and submitting it to other markets. So if you get paid another $100 and it only took you 1 hour to rewrite it, that means that altogether you've been paid $200 for 5 hours work which brings your rate up to $40 an hour.
But on the other hand, you may love writing fiction and find that you can write a 1,000-word short story in only an hour. So if your story is published and you're paid $100, your hourly rate has now more than doubled to $100 an hour.
But it's not always as simple as adding up the figures. What you can write and get paid for also depends on the needs of the market. Or you may want to write novels but you need to write articles as well to keep the money coming in while you finish your first book.
You may also decide to write for less money to get your foot in the door of a prestigeous magazine or because you have developed a good relationship with an editor and you don't want to jeapodise it. Or you write for less money because you're trying to notch up an impressive credit for your port folio.
So while money isn't always everything, it's important to keep your eye on the bottom line. That way you'll always be aware of the most lucrative path for your writing career. Because without the money, you won't have a writing career. You'll just be a person who writes in their spare time.
But I say that's rubbish. If you want to be a successful and wealthy writer, then you need to write for money. You can pursue a dream of becoming a starving writer living in a garret if you want to, but it's much better to earn a large salary for your work and live comfortably.
This doesn't mean that you shouldn't enjoy writing. On the contrary, writing should be your passion in life. Your writing should be what gets up early in the morning and keeps you up late at night. But you should also be earning a respectable living from your writing.
Being a successful and wealthy writer sounds great but how and where should you begin?
If you don't know what kind of writer you want to be then you can start by trying out all the different kinds of writing. You can try writing short stories, poetry, comedy, scripts, articles, books, novels, copy writing, ghost writing and more.
And you can send your work out to many different magazines, web sites, publishers and other markets. You'll probably receive back a huge avalanche of rejections, but in amongst them all you'll have a few successes.
From these successes you'll be able to see what pays the best and what you enjoy writing.
From this you can figure out your hourly rate.
For instance, say you were paid a fee of $100 for writing a 1,000-word article. Now that $100 may seem like a lot, but if it took you 4 hours to research and write the article, then your hourly rate is only $25.
Now you could improve that rate by rewriting the article from anther angle and submitting it to other markets. So if you get paid another $100 and it only took you 1 hour to rewrite it, that means that altogether you've been paid $200 for 5 hours work which brings your rate up to $40 an hour.
But on the other hand, you may love writing fiction and find that you can write a 1,000-word short story in only an hour. So if your story is published and you're paid $100, your hourly rate has now more than doubled to $100 an hour.
But it's not always as simple as adding up the figures. What you can write and get paid for also depends on the needs of the market. Or you may want to write novels but you need to write articles as well to keep the money coming in while you finish your first book.
You may also decide to write for less money to get your foot in the door of a prestigeous magazine or because you have developed a good relationship with an editor and you don't want to jeapodise it. Or you write for less money because you're trying to notch up an impressive credit for your port folio.
So while money isn't always everything, it's important to keep your eye on the bottom line. That way you'll always be aware of the most lucrative path for your writing career. Because without the money, you won't have a writing career. You'll just be a person who writes in their spare time.