"If" I could write for a living I would. But what does that mean exactly?
There are many ways to make a living writing. You can write what other people need you to write for them like business writing, scientific writing, financial writing and so on. Or you can be a reporter and be a journalist. There is screenwriting, there is text book writing and the list goes on and on. But all of those are a matter of writing about something outside of yourself.
The question I have is how do you make writing from the inside profitable? What do I mean really? I am not talking about a novel, because I am not really sure how to write an entire story over a long span. Maybe short stories, but I am not really drawn to that either.
What I want to write about is whatever I want to write about and to do it in the most compelling way I know how. I guess it is really about concepts and ideas, thoughts I have about the world we live in and as a therapy to see the positive in the world.
In my first book, Boredom to Brilliance, it was about the idea of being an artist and the importance of the arts for the world.
I already have great ideas for my next two books, but want to be able to begin earning money from them as well as Boredom to Brilliance.
I believe that the key to success in life is having sustained focus over a lifetime. When you dabble around in different things, it becomes difficult to master one thing. It helps when you know what you love from an early age. What do you want to be involved with? What is it that inspires you? In what area do you want to be involved with? Then life is about finding a way to be involved with it for a life time and earn your living doing it.
I know that my career ended early because I lost focus on it trying to do the right thing in other areas. Relationships, back up plans, and never being satisfied with where I was at the moment all made me lose focus in the area that I was gifted, talented, and most importantly paid to do. When you can earn a living doing what you love doing then it doesn't matter how much money you make, what matters is staying focused on doing that one thing and not get distracted by other things.
How much you make is a lot less important than how you manage the money you do make.
When you learn to manage the money you do make doing what you love, and stay out of trouble and stress financially, you will see that the curve of success will bend to the positive over time. Save, invest, and spend money on permanent things that grow in value and things you can use. You have to be wise in your decisions with your money. But, the golden law of money can be said in two ways...
Always make new money.
Never lose money.
Set up ways to have your money, make you more money, no matter how small it is.
It is actually very simple.
When you borrow money, the interest rate maybe anywhere between 5% and 25% depending on the instrument used.
When you save money, or invest money, it is very difficult to make 5% guaranteed.
The bottom line is this, when YOU are Saving, YOU are the Lender. When YOU are borrowing, YOU are paying a Lender. That is winning and losing in monetary terms.
A career is difficult enough to have by itself, disturbing that course is really not going to help anything.
So the key to writing is...it doesn't matter what I write, it matters only that I make money writing, or doing things to support that writing.
In that case I need to sell the books I write. In order to sell the books it helps that people know I have written a book. That is called "Marketing" and "Advertising". To make a living writing, I will need to build a reader/subscriber base that pays for the things I write so that they buy my writing over and over and over again.
The advantage of working through a publishing company is that they have the marketing, advertising departments already in place to promote my books. They also have the distribution system which can send my books to thousands of outlets all over the world and the powerful websites to promote them online. They will also have editors, and printers all lined up to help you produce a professional book.
DIY - or the "Do It Yourself" method is possible, but really difficult to make a huge impact with unless you are a marketing genius too. Then you are also spending a lot of time marketing and not as much time writing. So, focus is dispersed.
Right now I have no focus in my life in any way. Everything is distracted.
My true love is music. A close second is acting on stage. Third would be writing.
The closest thing to being an opera singer is acting. In acting you have to be able and willing to do all kinds of acting. Film, TV, Stage, Commercial. I really think that stage acting would be the closest to being an opera singer. With acting, you are playing your age, your type, what you are believable doing unless it is a character that is a fantasy character of some kind, then you can be anything. In opera your range in terms of dramatic, comic, and character acting is given to you by your voice type in many cases. So, you can play a young lover of 16 when you are 45 - 60 years old. In opera that is possible. In theater it isn't, usually.
When asking myself, "What do I want to do the rest of my life?" I would say one of two things, acting in plays, doing solo routines comic or otherwise, or conducting music or directing operas. But, I could also be a writer, but that is something that I only have myself to depend on, which makes it an attractive idea.
I am a creative. I am not someone who is great at numbers. But the truth is, they both meet at the bottom line called Happiness. and it is very difficult to be "Happy" and struggle financially.
The other thing that occupies my thoughts on all of this is "Who am I living for?"
I think women are much better at living for themselves than men are. Why? Because women must have security for themselves. They must have a roof over their heads. They must know where their next meal come from. They must have good clothing and health care.
Men not so much. Men can scrape by and be okay with it. But, doing that doesn't force men to require stability.
Women get married for a lot of reasons. Love, creating stability with someone and building a life. Men, get married for love too but that isn't enough really. A man only really begins to feel responsibility to someone else when they become fathers. Becoming a father forces you to be a breadwinner, a success, dependable, and stable. In fact I would go so far as to say that a man shouldn't even get married unless he plans to have children and be able to sponsor a family. I think that is the reality check that every man should make. I think the very purpose of a legal, and spiritual marriage is to have children. Otherwise it is simply a civil union.
(For this reason I don't believe in Homosexual Marriages because I don't think they are marriages, they are really civil unions. I do believe civil unions would be advantageous to heterosexuals as well, where you can be legally bound to another person for various reasons, or even have civil unions with someone of the opposite sex for the purpose of giving security to another person in times of need.)
I am experiencing a situation that has caused me to take pause. When I start to think of people who have no children it brings me back to reality as well. This entire dynamic forces me to look at society as a whole and the importance of family to society.
The surest way to ensure the financial well being in a society should really be seated in the family. I think it is really important for everyone to find a mate, get either a civil union or marry, have children or be partially responsible for children, and build your own family. If everyone was family based and not individually based then the world would be a lot more secure.
No matter what your career choice is, it is possible to do this and create a legacy through your family. Some children may stay attached to the mother and father when they get married, and build an extended life together. Others may go elsewhere and build a different legacy. It doesn't really matter. What matters is that everyone is looking to build the fortune for the future of their family, and that causes people to make the right decisions. Building family wealth should be a focus of every family and it should pass on from generation to generation.
As a person who is divorced/single, all I have to really think about is getting to the grave with $1 to my name. Here is the problem with that. It represents loss. When you consume all you have nothing endures. If everyone did that, it would take one generation for the fortunes of the world to disappear. It would all be gone.
Living a selfish life is bad for everyone.
In my life I made incredible mistakes because I was really only thinking about me. My decisions would have been a lot different had the risk of making bad decisions been higher. I didn't have children because I wasn't sure whether I could support them. But, the truth is that having children would have forced me to make sure I could support them and that would lead to better decisions.
At the end of the day, we are fortunate to live in a society where we can build capital for ourselves and our family. The basic fundamental social structure for society is the family. I am benefiting from this truth because people who lived before me built capital into their lives, some of them not really even understanding that fact. They did it mostly because of fear that a "Depression" would come again, but the result of their frugality was wealth.
When I see the faces of people working in fast food, retail stores, and grocery stores, they looked very stressed out. I think the reason is because the work they do, doesn't pay the bills. They aren't building capital. They aren't saving their pennies for someday. They can't get ahead because they don't know how, why, or what they are supposed to do.
When you take a look at any sitcom what do you see? You see one, maybe two or three standard sets. The living room, a local place to eat or hang out, and where they work. Basically what this is saying is that our lives take place in those few places. That is all your really need in life. A place to live, a place to socialize, a place to work. Three rooms, that's it!
When I look at the lives of my parents, my grandparents and most of the people I know, they have lived that way. For me I like to travel, see other things, go other places, meet new people. I am a rolling stone, but the problem with that is that I gather no moss.