Does Money Motivate You to Write

2 Comments

  • carrie - 14 years ago

    So, I waffled between the last survey and this one. In the last poll, I said I don't write for money. Then I remembered ... I don't write poems for money (I mean, no one gives me money for them), but in my day job, the one that pays me enough to live on, I write a lot. So in that case, money does motivate me to write. I like my job, but I would never, ever crank out grant proposals or newsletters just for the joy of it or even, I have to admit, for the social good of it, if I weren't paid to.

    So in this poll, I said money does motivate me to write.

    My initial response to the first poll was kind of a terminology problem, then, and I wonder if others have it as well. I forgot about my day job when I answered that question because the writing they pay me for feels like a fundamentally different activity than the writing I do for all those other reasons I checked off (regardless of whether someone eventually pays me 50 bucks for a poem.)

  • John Evans - 14 years ago

    Roseann, I took your poll and checked "intrinsic value" and "recognition" but I'm not sure I care to examine too closely what my motivation is. It would be nice to earn a buck and maybe I'm more motivated by money than I care to admit. I'm retired and I don't have to make a living at this. And it I wanted money, surely I would be writing something other than short fiction.

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