YES, YOU CAN EARN MONEY WRITING-IF

A friend recently gave up on writing as a moneymaking venture because he couldn't make a profit. So? Every published writer understands the feeling. The first year I wrote, I earned $6.80 and two bars of lemon soap-one of my editors in those days sold cosmetics on the side. The second year, I reached the dizzying heights of $36.20.

My husband claimed the soap was telling me to "clean up my act." I agreed-and faced facts. I could write what I wanted to write and have a hobby. Or I could write what magazines, publishers-and mostly, readers-wanted to read and have a solid, home business.

I am not promising riches. Even full-time writers seldom get rich. But anyone with a basic knowledge of English, or the gumption to get that knowledge, can string words together in interesting patterns and earn enough money to buy eggs and cheese, light bulbs, gasoline and all the other incidentals of having enough money needed to continue this business of living.

There is no mystery to selling manuscripts. You don't need to "know" an editor or live in a publishing metropolis. I live in central Kansas and most of the few editors I've met (recently) aren't those who buy from me. I have no influential friends or relatives, but I've earned a tidy writing income for more than 40 years.

How did I turn rejections into profits? The answer is so simple I can't understand why people don't discover it sooner than I did. In my case, when common sense finally dawned, I hunted up several issues of enjoyment and the next time for study. After which I researched and wrote a manuscript of interest to the particular readers of each magazine.

Not every manuscript sold on my first try, or even on my second or third. But once I began writing for readers, instead of myself, an amazing number did sell, and the average got better each year.

Writers are a funny lot. I think all of us, at first, write for ourselves. Some writers just never learn to make the switch from the "My childhood was terrible; my mother (brother, father, playmates) didn't understand me" type theme to the "If your childhood was terrible, here's what you can do to make YOUR future better." This theme is only an example, of course, but the slant of any published writing, even fiction, must offer more to the reader than to the writer. Or readers simply won't read it. And remember that editors, representing their audiences, are the writer's first readers.

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