MONEY, MONEY, MONEY

by Deborah Elliott-Upton

“But only a fool would write short stories solely for money. There has to be something more to it than that. In my case I am blessed (or cursed) with the ability to think up plots faster and more easily than I can fully develop them and set them down on paper.” – Edward D. Hoch, “The Joys and Challenges of the Short Story”

The Internal Revenue Service considers a lot of people calling themselves writers really hobbyists instead of professionals. Maybe they’re correct in a legal sense, but I know many dedicated people who do write everyday. They attend classes, get together with other writers to critique each other’s work and put in the time paying their dues. Some “sell” their work to non-paying markets just to get their name and the story in print. Does this make them any less professional than say an artist who hasn’t yet sold? In that case, this group would fit quite comfortably next to Vincent van Gogh. His work appeared in two small exhibitions and two larger ones, but he sold only one painting prior to his death. I assume the IRS wouldn’t have accepted his deductions.

As you can surmise, I am gathering information for federal income taxes. Like the old year rolling over to allow the new year room to stretch out, yearly taxes are a time for making resolutions for the next twelve months and taking stock of how you’ve spent your time on a monetary value assessment. Who decides when a writer has “made it?” Is it being published, receiving a check for a body of work or receiving awards? Or it is merely being happy with whatever you’ve written whether it’s seen print or not.

Probably the most joyful part of being a writer is when a reader’s enjoyed your writing. Not your mother or your friends, but someone you don’t know and has no reason to compliment your story except that they read your work and was moved to tell you they liked it. That’s worth more than money. Not that I don’t want to be paid. I enjoy receiving payment, but it’s more of a validation of time well spent.

Like Mr. Hoch, I write because I need to get the stories from within my head and onto paper. It’s a delicious feeling when the words come together and the plot weaves just the right way and the characters seem to be real people. Plus I need the room to house the new ideas flooding in every day.

At the Friends of the Library talk I did a couple of weeks ago, I was pleased that my interviewer had read my work and when we discussed several of the stories in an anthology, she asked which story in the anthology, Seven By Seven had been the most difficult to write and which the easiest. I admit I was stumped. The characters had taken residence with me for the time the story appeared on the computer screen. They seemed like friends, or at least friends of friends. But then, who doesn’t have some friends who are easier to be around than others?

Stacy, the interviewer, mentioned I often wrote from the point of view of the perpetrator and wondered why I had chosen that vehicle instead that of a detective or amateur sleuth. Those set of crime stories dealt with the seven deadly sins. As the author, I wanted to get inside the head of the one doing the crime more than the one solving the crime. I wanted to show how the villain had come to resort to a criminal act. In this set of stories, I thought any of us might have committed such crimes if the circumstances had been theirs. Not all crimes offer money as the reward. Crimes of passion are not thought-out and planned, nor are they usually executed well. And most get caught, too.

Crime often does pay and most likely better than most writers paychecks. But, we aren’t in it just for the money. Plotting the crimes are fun, too.