Writing at $2/hour

Yeah... you get paid diddly-squat for short stories. They aren't a way to make money, at all. Typically you are paid a flat rate (usually a few cents per word) rather than any sort of royalty agreement (like you might find in the music biz). The only places that pay anything like a good price for shorts are the top-notch magazines like Playboy, and those usually only publish one piece of fiction per issue. Obviously even a very very good writer's chances of getting published in the upper-tier magazines is so close to nil that it's foolish to assume you'll profit from it. In the old days guys like HP Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard could eke out a living on short stories alone, but sadly those days are gone. Instead the goal with short stories is not to make money off of those alone, but to a) use them as practice for something more profitable (ie, a novel) and/or b) write enough good-quality ones that you can publish a book of them.

Writing's a pretty tough business.

Hey Ja-el, come down and you can be a member of my family for Xmas!

Ohhh... starting with this camping trip last weekend, I've been eating so much that I feel totally bloated. How did I used to eat this much on a regular basis? Come the New Year it's time to take a few pounds back off, methinks. I learned this new way to do it... what you do is you don't eat for two days, and then on the third you eat a ton, but you throw it all back up and eat like a piece of toast or something. It's really healthy and supposedly it really works!

I finally played Upwords today. Twice. It has truly been a day to remember!!!!!!!!!!!!!

burnt