Writing Is a Worthless Passion: A Fallacy

Ever since I was a kid, my mother has been telling me that I cannot make enough money out of writing, but I proved her wrong, and I will continue to prove those people who say the same wrong. I have heard this opinion from so many people and even from the media—movies, TV series, and even novels. But do writers really earn meagre amount of money that they can barely support themselves? Well, that depends on the writer. As in my case, I do not really earn a lot, but I earn just enough to support my personal needs, my mother’s medication, and some other things I want. It all depends on how one takes advantage of his or her writing capacity. How, then, can you take advantage of your writing capacity?

The most important thing that you must do is determine what field of writing you’re good at. Is it fiction and poetry? Nonfiction? Once you’ve determined your forte, you can easily take advantage of it.

If you are good at writing fiction and/or poetry, you can send some of your works to contests—that is if you are confident enough to join, no matter the outcome. You can also accept commissions from clients—yes, become a ghostwriter for fiction and/or poetry. Ghostwriters are, usually, paid in great amounts—that is, if you also deliver satisfactory results. Most clients who require ghostwritten fiction and poetry are students taking up literature and/or language classes and professionals who wants to publish a story idea that they cannot write themselves (based from my experience). You can affiliate to an organization or a company who caters these kinds of services to clients and get paid either by pages or by project. Or you can also do go ahead and look for your clients online all by yourself. Websites like oDesk can help you with that.

If you are good at writing nonfiction, take a closer look at what genre of nonfiction you’re good at. Are you good at academic research? Business, marketing, and advertising? Informative and instructional materials? Health and medicine? There are a lot of subfields that one can write under nonfiction. It might be good for you to focus on one field and sell yourself in companies who are looking for good writers of the field. However, you also have the option of doing freelance writing for these instead of committing yourself to a specific company.

If you do not think that writing full-time can give you enough earnings, then, feel free to find a different job and just engage in part-time freelance writing. That way, you only have to write if you are available or in the right mindset (it is no doubt that writing can drain your brain when done so much in one day). As in my case, writing press releases for books is my full-time job; however, I also accept freelance jobs writing marketing articles, informative and instructional materials, academic essays and research papers, and even short stories and poems that I do every night or weekends.

As a writer, it is all up to you to divide your time wisely what and when to write a specific project. It is also up to you to make use of your writing capacity to the full. The world does not offer everything, so the best that you can do is find whatever access available that you can put your talents into its best use.