J.T. Ellison & Marie Bostwick Agree – Advice for Unpublished Writers

This week I am sharing an insightful post for unpublished writers. Written by bestselling author, J.T. Ellison, it’s chock-full of practical advice, but also shares some of her own perspective on things. I especially loved this comment:

Money would be nice, but the satisfaction I get out of creating something from nothing, breathing life into fictional characters and making my readers care about them, is priceless. And seeing your words in someone else’s font is pretty special too.

This ties in with the theme of Marie Bostwick‘s keynote speech at the 2015 La Jolla Writer’s Conference in which she emphasized that writing cannot be about the money. When you listen to her story and the story of other best-selling authors, you recognize how long it takes to become a best seller and the sacrifice it takes to get there. There seems little room for arguing.

If you’re writing for the money, you’re writing for the wrong reasons. – Tweet That!

To be clear, this doesn’t mean you don’t work hard to get your book out there and make as much money as possible (more money usually goes in hand with more readers), but in this industry there is never a guarantee.

If you knew right now, with 100% certainty,  that your work would never become a best-seller, never earn you huge amounts of money, … would you still be writing?