Crime Doesn't Pay, and Neither Does Writing

Things are going really well with Make It Better magazine (www.makeitbetter.net). I love the editors, they keep giving me interesting assignments, and I keep coming up with good ideas for stories. It would be a dream job to be able to write for them full-time, but as it stands, at $150 an article a month, how is that supposed to work? I keep hoping that somehow a full-time position will appear there, but since it's a start-up, and a magazine, in this economy, that's a pipe dream. And the novel is going well, but who knows? At best, and I mean absolute ideal best, which is to say I get an agent and it gets published (that only happens to about 5% of all novels written), it will be published in 2 years and for not much money.

All of this is to say that I am in the market for a full-time job and it will likely be doing marketing writing or PR or something that is actually valued (somewhat) and therefore paid (somewhat). It's depressing, but I keep telling myself this will be good for me and I need to suck it up and stop being such a baby. Who said you should be able to make a living doing something you love? Oh yeah, only every new agey life coach out there who happens to have a (very highly paid) monthly column in Oprah Magazine. Yes, I'm talking to you, Martha Beck. But being paid for your work IS good for you, and that's where I get frustrated with writing. Why is it that people working with numbers are valued more than people working with words? My worst fear is that it's a gender issue, and that is beyond depressing but SO typical.

But back to my novel. I am writing a scene in which the 45-year-old mom heroine goes to a funky local bowling alley to meet a psychic to help her locate the talking mixmaster, which she has sold at a school rummage sale and only later realized she has made a huge mistake. Now, this is fun.