Everyone who wants to be a professional writer has had this drilled into their heads by now — if you want to be treated like a professional, you need to treat yourself like a professional, and that means you get paid, son. You don’t write for your friend’s newsletter, for charities, or worst of all, just for the “exposure.” But what’s the psychological side-effect of all this? Could it turn writing from something you enjoy into just a job? Wendy Palmer wonders if that might be the case. She quotes cognitive psychology author Richard Wiseman:
“The effect has been replicated many times, and the conclusion is clear: if you set children to an activity that they enjoy and reward them for doing it, the reward reduces the enjoyment and demotivates them. Within a few seconds you transform play into work.”
She goes on to point out other studies that have been carried out on adults that show the same effect, and is concerned about what that might mean for us:
It should be stressed these are unconscious effects. And it made me wonder about the effects of insisting on being paid on the enjoyment to be found in writing, especially for new writers. I’m not advocating that just because we like writing, we shouldn’t be paid a fair compensation for it, of course. I’m just wondering whether, in the early stages of establishing the writing habit, for the sake of discipline and motivation, writers should focus on the intrinsic rewards of writing itself, and worry about publication and payment down the track. Maybe the mantra shouldn’t be “don’t write for free” but “don’t publish your writing for free”…
– “I do not write for free” — counter-intuitively damaging? « Wendy Palmer
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An unreliable narrator, MICHAEL MONTOURE ( montoure@bloodletters.com )
is an indie writer of horror and dark urban
fantasy. His
obsessions include hidden truths, secret dealings, and the changing and
fragile nature of our own pasts. He is known as much for his
spoken-word performances of his fiction at Seattle coffeehouses and
conventions as for the stories themselves. Currently working as a writer
and producer of the webseries Causality, he lives alone with
a gray cat by the edge of Echo Lake, Washington. ( Twitter / Facebook
/
Google+
)
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“Slices,” the first independently published horror fiction anthology by Michael Montoure. Kindle version, $2.99. Print version, $12.99. 
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“Counting From Ten,” originally issued as a small-press antho by Michael Montoure, now in its Tenth Anniversary Edition. Kindle version, $2.99. Print version, $12.99.
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“Permanent Damage,” the new dark fantasy and horror anthology by Michael Montoure. Kindle version, $2.99. Print version, $12.99.
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