Is it true...if you do what you love the money will follow?

yup!!! I just scored a paying gig that will supplement my day job income. When you do what you love, you'll sweat over it until you reap the benefits (cash and recognition). YOu can do it!

Yep. I believe that. I took a love of the outdoors into a paying gig doing freelance magazine articles for hunting mags and the moved into novels.

I think if you love what you do, you are more willing to put in the work to be successful. That said, I think loving what you do leading to money is applicable in freelance, but not so much in fiction.

Do what you love, but do it as a business, not a love. Then money will follow! For my regular job (also something I love), I make more because I work hard on the business aspects, not just the fun stuff.

What a great question! I think it also depends on a combination of luck, perseverance, good timing, hard work, and a good attitude......and then the money comes. I doubt it's as simple as doing what you love and the money simply following ---- but I'm willing to bet there are examples that prove it does work! (and examples to prove it doesn't).

It's more complicated than that.

Let's be honest. There are a lot more people who want to "be a writer", than are willing to spend the requisite BIC and HOK time. They don't actually enjoy the process of writing.

These wannabees cloud many conversations about wanting to write. They don't want to write. They want to live the imaginary life of one who is known as a writer. They often have a lot of desire, but lack the discipline to focus and grind it out, even when the creative well seems to be dry.

The drive must be directed toward producing good writing and marketing one's products. This desire can lead to financial success.

You're unlikely to financially succeed at any endeavor if you don't receive enjoyment from doing it.

I agree with that, but one has to not only love what they do but do it very well to make money from it since there is so much competition out there, especially among writers. Super question, jasperd.

Oh, most definitely!

I think you have to be willing to compromise sometimes. In the best of all words, I would be a fiction writer. I discovered there is less competition on the non-fiction side of things, so that's where I work. It's still writing and I still enjoy it, but writing fiction would be my true love.

jasperd said:

Is it true...if you do what you love the money will follow?
Even with writing

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I am praying that this is the case.

Codger said:

They often have a lot of desire, but lack the discipline to focus and grind it out, even when the creative well seems to be dry.

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That used to be me. I would start writing, but the need for instant gratification would kick in, and I would give up. But I've decided to bite the bullet and give myself the discipline needed to make this dream a reality! I hope that the money follows, (and real soon too), but if it doesn't I'm willing to stick it out over the long haul.

I agree with Susie's comment. If you love something, the passion naturally follows (not necessarily money.) Money comes later, with a combination of things that fall into place. But it is very possible, especially depending on the genre of writing that interests you.

That is something I have been wrestling with for a while. When asked, I always say that if I could do what I love and get paid for it, I'd be a writer full time. But the pay has never been there, so I am going to school to find a stable career. Just about the time I give up on really writing for a living, someone reads a story of mine and goes on a mission to find a publisher for me saying, "But this has to be shared!"

I think that if you continue to write, recognition of your work will always find you at times. When that happens, I always think, "Wow--what could I accomplish if I really worked at being a full time writer?"

jasperd said:

Is it true... if you do what you love the money will follow? Even with writing

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Not necessarily. If you're good at what you're doing (you might hate it, mind you), you have bigger chances of beating competition. If, on top of being good, you love what you're doing, it means you have much better chances of persevering with it.

I sense the true question is in the "money will follow" part. I've always been good at writing, and loved doing it, but money never followed. When it did start to follow though was when I made a resolution to make at least an equivalent of my then-salary from writing. I didn't do much about this resolution, and I didn't have to: as if by magic, assignments just started to flow in. People started calling, unknown companies started hiring me. Before I actually made that resolution I had spent years desperately looking for employers leaving my writing resumes and stuff to everybody and their dog, and nothing had happened. Now new employers materialized as if out of thin air, eager to offer me a gig.

I still need to do the work, though... and sometimes it's hard: long hours and sleepless nights-before-the-deadline. So loving it definitely helps at this stage.

You probably heard about it a million times in those self-improvement books, but setting yourself a financial goal does indeed set the wheel of Fortune into motion. Things start happening. But simply by loving what you're doing -- I don't think so.

No. You have to be professional and ambitious about it too. But love helps - it makes it more fun to keep doing it when the money comes and it turns into a job. ;-)

Hmmm, there are levels of passion and love. I think if you're engulfed in a passion, you can't help but make money at it. I know too many people to claim to love something, then spend so little time actually doing it. It's hard to think of something that if done 10 hours a day, you don't become phenomenally gifted in.

Been lurking for a bit and this thread compelled me to actually contribute something...

Jasperd - if you're currently writing and are considering hanging it up in order to chase a bigger paycheck, hopefully I can give you an idea of how you may end up feeling.

Writing for a living has always been a dream of mine, but I've never gone full steam ahead because I'm a wuss who has always taken the safe, practical route. I started down this road before I even entered the workforce. I vividly remember the day I chickened out and decided to minor in creative writing instead of following my heart and making it my major.

After college, I went full bore after whatever would put me in the best position to make more money. I defined my self worth and happiness by my paycheck.

I can't tell you what its like to be a starving artist because I've never experienced it. I've never had the guts to say, "eff it...I'm doing this and I'm not going to worry about where I am 6 months from now." What I can tell you is that the choices I've made have left me comfortable, bored and apathetic. I often feel like I'm sleepwalking through life, and buying a bigger TV doesn't change that.

I don't know which is preferable. I suppose the grass is always greener and all that, so I'm inclined to say that following your heart is the way to go. However, that's without taking into account whether you're supporting kids, have a crazy mortgage to pay, etc.

The notion of someday becoming a writer still eats at me. I mean, I lurk on a forum designed for writers, and I'm no closer to making a move than I was 10 years ago. That should tell you something

I love sleeping. And I can do it 10 hours a day. I'm pretty sure I'm not soon going to get paid to do it...

At the same time, I won't do jobs I don't like just for the money. No, I'm not rich, in fact I'm barely getting by -- but I can tell you, I'm a LOT happier doing what I love and being poor than I would be doing something I hated 40 hours a week and being rich!

"If you love what you do, the money will follow."

This is good for morale, but is also an empty statement. There are no guarantees about anything. I'd like to believe that good work always pays off, but happy people fail every day, and rotten people succeed at some other pace. Even delusional people get it right once in a while.

I agree with the points that if you love what you do you will probably work at it a bit harder, or learn faster. Thanks, jeffo, for the sleeping example. I might love skipping rocks across a stream, or punk raccoon taxidermy. I may even be the best at it, but if there's no market, or the market is completely swarming with other people doing the same thing (like most arts), the odds get ... odder.

Actually, I know of nothing that can ruin a hobby like trying to make money at it. Example: for a while, I would make bead jewelry in the evenings, a nice pasttime my wife could help with. She thought it might make a fun business. I ran some numbers and saw we'd have to sell 50 or 60 pieces a day to really make it worth it. And the cost of reaching those figures? And the labor involved? It stayed a hobby.

I have to say that very few hobbies or extra skills can make the jump to a full-blown lucrative business. Most fall in the trickle-of-money highly frustrating category.

I agree with jeffo again: I'm much happier doing something I like and being poor than being a drone who will do anything for a buck. This is, I believe, the practical version of the opening pep talk ... the value of being happy with what you've got.

It's good to be upbeat and optimistic, makes dealing with people much easier. But a business also requires research, knowing your expenses and goals, and a grasp of reality.

Sure, the money will follow, but many times it will keep its distance so no one thinks you're together.

jeffo said:

I love sleeping. And I can do it 10 hours a day. I'm pretty sure I'm not soon going to get paid to do it...

At the same time, I won't do jobs I don't like just for the money. No, I'm not rich, in fact I'm barely getting by -- but I can tell you, I'm a LOT happier doing what I love and being poor than I would be doing something I hated 40 hours a week and being rich!

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How about doing something you hated for 45 hours a week and being poor? Been there. Now, I work 30 hours a week at something I really do enjoy, but it's by no means a real money-maker. But you have to evaluate what works in the overall scheme of life and see where things fit and how you'll be happy. The odd thing is that I'm making more (not by much, though) at 30 hours a week than 45, and I'm happier. Learning to be content is a great lesson. Not to say you shouldn't have goals, but it's important to see that the priorities for those goals are in the right place.

jasperd said:

Even with writing

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There was a book with that title, "Do what you love, the money will follow," so it MUST be true!

I remember reading the book, but not really anything the book says. It obviously made a big impression on me, just like a lot of other "self-help" books I read such as "Feel the fear and do it anyway." I read that one too, and the whole thing it tells you is already wrapped up in the title.

I should just stand in front of the "Self-Help" section at the bookstore and read the titles (I've actually done this), it would probably help me so much that I couldn't stand myself!

But no, it's still the other people whom I can't stand...

It's about as true as, "Study for a test, and you'll get an A+ on it."

IDEALLY, everyone who works doing anything, including writing, will love what they do! Of course we know that's not true. In the ideal world we love what we do, we are knowledgeable in every facet of what we do, we are among the most competent of all in what we do....we are just great! And when it comes to financial success as a writer, the book written needs to be in demand, have a large audience, and people (i.e., publishers) who will buy same and pay money for it.

So, unto itself is love of what we do enough to guarantee financial success --- absolutely not, although it's a lofty goal we should all aspire to.

I love writing and have been doing so for many years with a degree of financial success. However, my first love was basketball - I wanted to become a professional basketball player, and I can assure you that I worked very hard to try and make that become a reality. I got up to semi pro ball but that's about as far as my ability would take me. The dream and the hope of making "big money" burst. I then turned full time to writing and publishing. But the point remains, I loved basketball, was probably better that 99% of the population, I worked real hard at it, but in the end I simply wasn't good enough. Just another nobody, so to speak. So to say financial success will follow a love of writing or anything else is, I believe, far too shallow a statement.