Novel

From about the time I learned to read I wanted to be a writer. Somewhere along the line I became convinced I wouldn't be ... and yet here I am. Writer for money.

But the one thing that I learned in the intervening thirty years is that writing for money isn't that hard.

However, writing what you want for money is.

I write all day. I'm currently writing a document that will justify the construction of a new building. Yes, it's scintillating. I write a bunch of stuff on topics I never even considered before they hit my desk, and while much of it is pretty interesting, it's really only because I have a fairly loose definition of "interesting".

And while I would very much like to earn money writing what I want, writing literary fiction is a very, very hard way to make a living. I always figured if I did so, I would probably write genre fiction -- romance or fantasy novels. I like to read 'em. They sell. Ergo they make money, and you don't find yourself up until the wee hours of the morning scribbling in a journal to write, because you have to keep your day job.

Or maybe you do, but the possibility of that is less.

So I read this article with some interest. The idea that novels with a good plot that carry the reader along -- at this time, often confined to supermarket racks and I suppose not considered "good writing" -- are making a comeback.

And I could not be more thrilled. Not just because let's face it, I'm hardly a high brow reader myself. But because making a living from writing that I like doing? Might not be as impossible as I once thought.