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Writing for Pay is Like Hunting for Prey
or why the writer that stays awake stays alive

In your early days of writing you write for love. Then you write for fame and publication.

But you need food to stay alive if only to last to the end of the next chapter as your write your story. Sadly, nobody will bring you food while you do so and you need to hunt for it yourself.

Happily, the zombie days of chasing live food on faster legs are gone for most of us, nutty survivalists excepted. Now, we barter money for food for the most part and worry about re-cycling the outer wrapper so as to save the planet from ourselves.

Nonetheless, the watchful writer can turn the possible destruction of Earth to advantage. He can write about it for a readership wondering when the day of destruction will arrive.

It may, of course, never arrive. Which is all the better for the writer for she can announce that the planet has been saved, in the nick of time, and bank the proceeds.

Our watchful writer (this is you, it just sounds better that way) will see where trends are going and prepare some words about the journey and destination for a busy editor to approve, publish and pay for.

It’s not difficult to find subjects to write about. Many freelance writers simply watch the television news, note what happened, and seek some deeper material to offer as follow-up information to the news desks.

But the hunting pack lies that way and the shouted question of the beginner to the door stopped quarry asked as if nobody else can hear the question. If it’s on live television, the nation will have heard the question, so there’s little chance of selling it to a print client.

Better by far to be the quiet hunter and to watch for single opportunity so as to give you the lead in the market. It can be a story uncovered when researching something else; it can be a casual remark made in your hearing that starts you off on the chase for the story or opportunity.

Don’t think for a moment that if it was worth something then another writer would have written it up by now. Such is the speed of publication in our present times that many fine stories are left uncovered. The watchful writer will see them for what they are: morsels that may well make a feast.

But, you well may say, I don’t need to chase after such titbits. Perhaps you do not. Well done. But say you are a novelist who is not yet a celebrity and you have grown tired of rejection letters when you send in memoir disguised as fiction.

Then you become the watchful writer and watch where something stirs in the undergrowth of life. That could well be your breakthrough novel right there.

At the least it could be a back story readymade for a supporting character to slip into so you can concentrate on the larger issue of writing to stay alive, being well fed, and feted.

© Brendan Nolan 2009
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