money … flowing like a river

Rules are made for the common good, which is all very good for the common.  ~ Jasmine Guy, as Whitley Gilbert

Last post, I went after one of my least favorite writing “rules”: Write What You Know.  My favorite teacher never fed me that party line — thank God — and I think I’ve been the better writer for it.  Today I want to go after another rule that’s doing some people more harm than good:

Money Always Flows Toward The Writer.

Before I really get rolling, I want to say that my stance regarding the flow of money is not quite so rigid as my position against WWYK.  Certainly we want money flowing toward the writer.  My opposition is to the dogmatic application of the MoneyFlow rule.  The truth is that not only will money flow away from the writer from time to time, but that the writer should encourage that to happen.

If money always flows to the writer, how are we to buy the things we need to have?  Seriously.  Are we really going up to the register with our box of purple ballpoint pens and telling the cashier, “Hey, no, I’m a writer.  So I don’t have to pay for these.  In fact, you should give me twenty dollars.”

(If we are supposed to be doing that, by the way, I really do need to hear about it, since I’m spending my own money on that stuff.)

The Money Flow rule, applied dogmatically, would seem to prohibit spending any money, not just on pencils and pens and that wonderful stuff but on classes and memberships and things like that.  Not a good result.  Writers need to send money flowing away from them sometimes.  We just need to watch where it flows and why it’s flowing there.

Some of the things I pay for are writing necessities.  There are the pencils and pens I mentioned earlier.  I didn’t pay for my laptop (my dad gave it to me as a gift), but I’ve spent money on flash drives and printer cartridges and paper.  I paid for my AlphaSmart when I thought the Internet was distracting me, and then I paid for a cable to connect it to my computer.  I need that stuff, and it’s been worthwhile to spend on it.

Some of the best money I spend on writing every year goes toward my membership dues for Romance Writers of America and the Virginia Romance Writers.  Every year, I get back more than I pay for.  Just the 12 issues of the Romance Writers Report, the downloadable handouts from each year’s National Conference and the online copy of Keys to Success are worth my annual dues, and the RWA has so much more to offer than those three things.  I’ve learned so much from regular meetings with the VRW (and from the Meetings After The Meetings, at lunch), and I’ve made some great friends I probably wouldn’t have met if money hadn’t been flowing from the writer.  It’s possible to do some networking and keep up with the industry and improve the actual writing without paying a dime.  But I know I’m getting real quality for my money, and if I didn’t think that was the case, I wouldn’t spend it.

Certainly the writing world is full of scams and shadiness and good old-fashioned wastes of money.  I’m a firm believer in investigating spending opportunities before I allow money to flow away from me.  Money doesn’t flow anywhere unless I know what I’m likely to get back — and whether I’m likely to get something every bit as good or better without paying for it.  But I spend money on my writing when it’s worthwhile to do so.

As a romance writer, I often have to grit my teeth and try to respond gracefully when people treat my work like a hobby (graceful responses are listed in Keys to Success, by the way).  But the MoneyFlow rule has made writing one of the only businesses in existence in which owners are actively discouraged from investing money into their own enterprises.  The MoneyFlow rule has the power to close doors and keep them closed.  Don’t let this bit of dogma keep you from getting ahead.