I’m in trouble. I’m a writer who doesn’t write. Not really. Not enough. I’m too distracted by the rickety, creaking carnival ride of life that has me gripping the broken safety bar. I’m white knuckled and sweaty because things are at a weird and scary juncture right now. It’s a dicey, unstable situation, and I’m a few bad months away from living in someone’s garage.

But here’s the real problem: I shuffle back and forth between “writing for the love” mode, and “writing for an elephant’s diaper load of money” mode. Mostly because I love writing but I’m also terrified of being broke. REALLY broke. It’s a hobgoblin that wakes me at 2am when I realize, simultaneously, I’m middle aged, my rent is due in a week, I’ve got four hundred dollars in the bank, three days of work on the books, and two dozen promising but half-finished stories in my queue. To compound the misery, there’s an article on Huffpost about authors who make a hundred grand selling tentacle porn or some other weird kink on Amazon for ninety nine cents a pop. Continue reading →