money

i’m doing it for love. really.

I know that writing fiction does not generate much income. I know that most novelists do not support themselves on their royalties and advances. Then I read articles like this one and I really know it.

It’s not the lack of money more than it is the lack of readership that bothers me. My husband says that it’s a pride thing instead of an avarice thing for me. Darn right. If I’m spending all this time crafting and polishing my stories, I’d like to have lots of readers, please. Preferably tens of thousands of them.

That said, I got a thousand words on the last story of this month. So, despite my pessimism, I’m still planning on inflicting my work on the unsuspecting populace. Oh, and ALSO, I got my contributor copy of Neverlands and Otherwheres which includes my story Second Sight (written as R. A. Gale). I got a real kick out of watching my husband read my story in its published form. Hee.

a nice extra

One of the nice things about having a story published (besides the validation of having someone who is not your husband or best friend liking your work and making it available for dozens of strangers to read) is that occasionally you get a check for it. Now I’m too mercenary to frame said check and hang it up on the wall, but I can’t just dump it into the checking account, a mere drop in our pond of liquid assets. It is, after all, special money.

So, writer friends (and non-writer friends, too), what would you do when being paid for your writing is still an exciting novelty and you have no need to use the money to buy groceries or pay off debt? Would you splurge on a few new books or dinner out? Or invest it back into your writing somehow–put it into a new printer fund, buy a how-to book, sign up for a writing workshop? What are your plans for income generated by a not-yet-fulltime passion?