Writer's Block

Getting paid for it

I unwittingly caused a kerfuffle on Goodreads, my dorky booklovers' social-networking site, when I posted on a forum for writers my number one tip for getting published: be willing to write about whatever the publication wants.

It sounds obvious (at least to me), but you'd be surprised how many people don't do this. They only want to write about what interests them personally. Maybe it's dogs, or the Superferry, or their opinion on whether or not Wilco is the greatest band of all time. They decide on the story they want to tell, they write it the way they want to write it, and they send it to a magazine without considering whether it fits at all. The story ends up in the recycling bin, and they wonder why they haven't been published.

The big secret is, if you're a halfway decent writer and can muster up a little professionalism, it's shockingly easy to get published and be paid for your work. You just have to be flexible. A couple of years back, I pitched a story about Hawaii to a national travel magazine that I thought was really good. They passed on that idea but asked me if I wanted to write about taking a surfing lesson instead. Was I really interested? No. Did I take the job? Yes. Result: a cover story, $1,600, and a whole lot of fun writing the story. Oh, and being the first writer they call when they want a story about Hawaii.

Well. Not everyone on Goodreads liked my tip.

One poster wrote: " What are you talking about!!!  It seems that you HATE personal creative writing, or you don't have the least bit knowledge of what it really is. But then you are just a reporter for a small daily newspaper! "

Another guy said my approach sounded like "torture."

I seemed to have stirred up a longstanding game among us creative types: "who's the real writer?"

Naturally enough, I side with the pros. You can't be a writer if people aren't reading your work. Everyone with a drawer full of short stories thinks they're the next Ernest Hemmingway. But getting published -- and getting paid -- is what counts.

But there's another school that believes people who write for money are sellouts. Staying true to your art and writing for yourself is what makes you a real writer. Like other activities, if you're getting paid, you must not be doing it for love.

When I was in college taking creative writing classes, I fell solidly into the second camp. I wrote poems, had a thrilling and poetry-soaked fling with my hot TA, and could imagine no better future than to live in poverty writing soul-baring poems and dark, spare short stories. Naturally, I would be discovered as a genius after I died.

Then the class ended, I got summarily dumped, and the poems went back into my binder where nobody read them but me.

So when I got the opportunity to work at a "small daily newspaper," being read by a lousy 20,000 people every day -- not to mention getting a paycheck, health insurance and a 401(k) for my trouble -- didn't sound quite so bad.