Art is art to me, but I think most people value the visual arts or musicians a hell of a lot more than writers. It's sad. I'd hate to live in a world of illiteracy.

When I'm doing those things I give a fair bit of work away for one reason or another. It could be argued that I'm the worlds worst businessman. But if you want to buy a painting, you pay. In money. There is no barter for exposure or anything else. Don't expect to talk me down on price either.

No money, no writing to your specs. Ever. I started working as a writer in 1974, when I quit my job and started freelancing. It took a while for me to get assignments from the magazines I was targeting. Eventually, though, my persistence and skills paid off. I wrote for a large range of consumer magazines, from Seventeen and Mother Earth News to Popular Mechanics and finally PC World. It's what I did for a living until 2003, when I finally quit doing that. The magazine business, particularly in the areas I wrote, was collapsing and the work just wasn't there any longr So I did other things. I had a website that sold mineral specimens to collectors. I wrote for that website...a lot. It made money, and that money came from the effective descriptions I wrote for each individual mineral specimen. Mineralogy was my hobby, so I turned it into a business.

That business, one of the first of its type on the Internet, was successful for a few years, but eBay and a proliferation of similar businesses made it less viable, so I closed it down. But what to do next? The economy sucked, and I hadn't worked at a regular job since 1974. I'm a writer. That's what I do.

So, I hung out my shingle as a content writer for websites. Writing websites is marketing writing. I can do that for a wide range of businesses. I didn't work for any of the 1 cent per word content mills. I'm a better writer than that. I advertised and marketed myself and finally hooked up with a web designer who was successful and who understood the value of good, professional content. I'm still writing for him, on a project-by-project contract basis. I write for a couple of other clients, as well, but always for fees that repay my experience, skill, and attention to detail. I'm getting paid less than I used to on a per word basis, but do fine when I measure what I'm getting per hour of actual writing. I'm fast, clean, and effective in my writing, and I can make a living doing it.

Today, the Internet is full of writing. A lot of it is done for no payment. Most of it, really. I won't work that way. Except on DU, where I write for myself, about what I want, and whenever it suits me to do so. I don't get paid for that...it's my hobby. I write because I write, but if I'm writing what someone else wants me to write, I get paid. I wouldn't do it otherwise. When I write my opinion, I don't need to get paid. That's fun.

It's really quite frustrating.

-Laelth