According to MSN Money (http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/RetirementandWills/RetireEarly/WhyPoorPeopleWinTheLottery.aspx) "the odds of winning the Mega Millions are 1 in 135,145,920. Buying two tickets bumps your odds only to 2 in 135,145,920."
Your chances of winning the lottery are better than your chances of becoming rich and famous as a fiction writer.
Writing, like playing the lottery, is a numbers game. The first piece you write has a 1 in a hundred billion chances of making you rich and famous. Each succeeding book you write increases your chances. Ray Bradbury used to tell beginning writers to write their first million words and then throw them away. They don't have a chance of selling (or writing anything really good) until they have written more than a million words.
Your chances of being hit by lightning are thousands of times better than the chance of becoming rich and famous as a fiction writer, and hundres of times better than winning the lottery.
It is possible to earn a reasonable living writing non-fiction, and some writers can mix sales of fiction and non-fiction to achieve an annual six figure gross. But it is extremely rare to be able to earn a living solely writing fiction.
The best way to get rich writing fiction is to already be rich and famous and then sell your fictionalized memoirs (think of Dick Chaney, Donald Trump, most movie and NFL stars). Even lottery winners have a better chance that you or I of selling a book and becoming rich and famous because they are already rich and famous.
Here an interesting perspective from Jenny Diski's blog:
http://jennydiski.typepad.com/biology_of_the_worst_kind/2006/10/how_to_become_r.html
So, wannabe writers, forget the rich and famous part. Write fiction because you love to tell stories and you have good stories to tell. But don't quit your day job until you've sold at least one book to the movies or tv.
No comments:
Post a Comment