So you Love to Write?

If you love to write it doesn't necessarily mean that you can make money easily by writing. All people who make money from their writing, suffer trying to bring to people whatever they write for others. Because writing for yourself and writing for others is two very very different things. Over the years I realized that writing for others for money I would really hate. It took me a long time to realize this though.  I realized this the same way that over time I realized that becoming a good psychologist and then listening to people's problems day after day would make me want to jump off a cliff and end my life. That didn't stop me from helping people that I met along the way so they didn't commit suicide or harm someone else. It just meant that I eventually realized I wasn't cut out and didn't have the separation or patience necessary to become a full time psychologist like I was studying to be in college.

In the same way I always knew I loved to write from the time I was about 8 or 9 years of age. I loved to write stories and to write about my adventures traveling around mostly the western United States back then from California to Mexico to Washington where I was born in Seattle to Idaho where my Grandad had a 2000 acre mining claim when I was under 12 and to Wyoming and the Tetons and Yellowstone on down to Denver and Santa Fe and Arizona on the way back to California where I grew up mostly. And also trips to Vancouver in Canada with my parents. So, I always would collect rocks from the Painted Desert when we passed by back then in the 1950s and see the Grand Canyon and all that and write about all my (to me) amazing adventures traveling with my parents. I also wrote because I was an only child so I had no one my age to share these experiences with so I often fantasized about a brother or a sister to share all this with as I wrote. And then sometimes one of my cousins would travel with us or on shorter (within California one of my friends might travel with my parents and I in our big 1960 Mercury Station wagon after I was 12 in 1960. And before that we traveled in my Dad's  new 1956 Century Buick and before that we traveled in my Dad's brother's car, a 1941 Century Buick that his brother owned who disappeared in a plane crash in 1942. (supposedly)

So, if you love to write it doesn't necessarily follow that you will love to write to make money. Most people who write for money suffer a great deal in getting every word just write and ready for publishing and half the time they don't even make their publishing money back especially if they self publish. But I suppose at least you could then say you have published a book even if no one reads it.

What I have always found in my own life is that I write for myself first and if anyone else enjoys what I write so much the better. It is a completely different style of writing than if I was trying to write to please everyone by trying to make money writing. I write first to please myself but I am also thinking about how what I write might help others in various ways. So, in the end if you write for money it is very difficult but if you write for fun it is something you can do only for yourself or you can write in a blog like I do here for yourself and for others if they so wish. You might never know the lives you save or the people you help, except for the comments that some people leave when they appreciate what you have written about. But in the end, writing for me is a prayer, a meditation, a therapeutic experience and a way to understand myself and the universe and God and all life better. In the process of my research I learn many amazing things every day. And hopefully what I learn also helps you some way in your life too. So good luck to you if you also like to write. Have a Nice Day!