Creativity vs Revenue

By Jenni Hammitt

April 20, 2009

primarycolours Writing fiction has been my life time goal. For a while that is all I worked on. Every night I would come home and spend hours working on my latest fiction pieces. That was my focus. That was all that mattered to me for the longest time. Then I started writing articles, and I had some success. It was nice to have the extra money coming in.

After the novel and the novella were done, I started gaining more interest on blogging, writing articles, and generating other content. I figured it would be nice to have a little side business. I could generate a little “fun money” while I wrote my fiction pieces. It was win/win. Even the non-paying jobs were getting me some nice attention and helping me create a presence on the internet.

About a year ago, things changed. My focus moved from my fiction to blogging, article, how to, and web site content. I’m not totally sure how it happened. It just did. When I didn’t get a teaching placement for the summer, I didn’t panic because I knew I could make up the money if I wrote at least three how to’s a week. Soon I was making enough to pay for my cruise in December.

Of course, the goal of most writers is to be successful. We want to develop a readership, but we also want to make a living off what we love. I also know it is easy to be sucked in by the easy money. I do not get paid for everything I write, but the revenue I have generated has been nice. Plus that work has helped me gear readers towards my novel and my novella. Fiction work does not have an upfront pay off.

If I just focus on one story (right now I have three going) and it takes me six months to a year to write it will still take me at least a year to find a publisher. Then it will be another waiting period before it goes to print. I won’t see revenue until that cycle has completed.

I think many writers are faced with this dilemma. Once we had dreams of a certain type of success. Now things have changed, and we have to decide which way to go. Do we sell out? Do we keep with our initial plan? Or do we create a whole new path by combining the two?