For love or money. A writer’s tale
Why do you write?
For love or money?
When I was 10 years old, I knew what I wanted to be when I “grew up”:
A storyteller.
More specifically; I wanted to be the George Lucas of the literary world. My first ever novel, which I hand wrote across multiple 96-page school exercise books, was titled Galactic War. Unsurprisingly, the story was heavily influenced by Lucas’ movies.
OK. It was a complete rip off!
Anyway, I submitted Galactic War into a national writing competition for school kids and never heard anything back from the judging panel. I guess they realised the story was an unrepentant, Trade Mark trashing riff on A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back and they feared the maniacal wrath of Lucas Film so much that they simply tossed my manuscript into the rapacious maw of the sarlacc pit where it was slowly, and agonisingly, digested over a period of a thousand years...
Another possibility for the story’s dismissal was that the manuscript was typed by my step father’s secretary who so obviously couldn’t read my handwriting; for example, the name of the story’s villain kept changing from page to page 🤣
As the burn of rejection faded, and my attention turned from storytelling to big hair metal bands, Lego and… Dungeons & Dragons, my storytelling dreams faded away into the burning of a twin sunset…
Until my early 20s when I found myself falling in love once again with Fantasy novels, particularly the works of Robert Jordan, Angus Wells, Tad Williams, Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman and David Eddings. In between 1994–1996 I came up with dozens of ideas for novels and comic books, particularly focused on the Fantasy (Sword & Sorcery) genre and, in early 1996, I started writing my second novel The Dreamscroll.
Over the next four years, I wrote 1 1/2 books out of a trilogy (of course it was a trilogy!); for a total of more than 250,000 words and then… girls came on the scene and all dreams of being a dorky, wizardly fantasy writer kind of went up in smoke.
And that ended the mighty Age of Writing For Love.
Between 1998–1999 I studied my second degree; a Graduate Diploma in Public Relations and in mid-1999 I got my first real job (much to the delight of my current father-in-law). And that began the mighty Age of Writing For Money. Exception for a few indy comic book scripts and blog posts for pop culture websites, I have spent the best part of the last 20 years writing for money, not love which begs the question:
Did I become the storyteller I wanted to be when I “grew up”?
The definitive answer to that question is “No”.
And that’s a real shame.
The boy with a wild imagination who dreamed of being a creative novelist grew instead to be a balding, middle-aged corporate writer. Hey, at least I ended up working in healthcare!
And that there folks could very well be the end of the story: My story.
But, somewhere along the way, from time to time, the kid that completely ripped off Star Wars keeps coming back! And this time, he’s decided to write for love 😍
But, here’s the thing about falling in love; there’s always an element of fear that accompanies that heady spiral into butterfly-filled stomachs, flushed cheeks and piles of Hallmark cards.
In the middle of last year, I started to write Storming The Shard; an original far-flung future Sci-Fi that’s a cautionary tale about cloud technology and watching too many cyberpunk movies (especially The Matrix sequels). I plotted out the whole story, came up with the protagonist/ Hero, the antagonist/ Villain and the Guide (a wicked-cool golem; OOPS, spoiler alert!), and then I wrote most of the first 1/3 of the tale and then… I ran smack, bang into a fear-induced STOP sign.
For love or money?
When you write for cold, hard cash (or maybe monthly bank transfers) there are no STOP signs; you keep writing, or you get fired. It’s a pretty raw equation. There’s nothing like the fear of unemployment to keep up the keyboard banging motivation!
When you write for schmaltzy, nostalgic and giddy notions of wonder and awe, the equation is a little different. It looks something like this:
Time —Work — Life — Love = Writing
At this point, there’s not much left in my tank except for a wonder-filled, childlike naivete that I was meant to be a storyteller, that I will be a storyteller and that I will write for love and tell the stories I want to tell…
One day. Soon.
How about you?
Do you write for love or money?
Thanks for reading Writers Guild — A Smedian publication
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