You might have noticed a slight absence here. Then again, you might not, why should you? But with all this blethering about writers and writing, and the endless push, push, push for a publisher, I thought I’d say something about writing. Specifically why I write, because I can’t speak for anyone else. 

It’s supposed to be fun.

I could stop there, but I won’t. So there. I just started writing the first new historical for over a year. The book I wrote before that was about a merman. The one before that was about an ex-model and her plastic surgeon. And God, it was fun.

I switch things around because I enjoy doing it, but I can do it now because I’ve found my voice. I still don’t know what the hell it is, but apparently I have one and apparently some people like it. Great. But that, gentle reader, isn’t why I write.

I write because it’s fun.

For the money? When I first started writing for publication, eight years ago, it was in the Wild West days of epublishing, when publishers routinely started, published, then exploded in a puff of conjurer’s smoke. We got wary, we got suspicious, we got wise. And I barely cleared $50 a month, if I was lucky. So years passed, I kept writing, (because it was fun) and I started earning more money. Now I’m one of the highest earning epublished authors in the UK. Not sure about anything else.

What does that mean? It means I get to attend one of the best damned parties anywhere once a year (Romantic Times Convention) and I don’t have to dip into my savings to do it. It means I can attend a few other shindigs here at home. It means I can afford a nice computer and peripherals instead of second-hand outdated stuff. That’s about it.

Except that it’s fun.

What else does it mean? That I work 10 hours plus a day on something I find the greatest fun outside bed. That I have found the one thing that I do well. Everything else I’m adequate, or competent, or rubbish at, but writing is something I do well. Or so I’m led to believe. I still don’t quite believe it. That I’ve met people who understand, everyone from an ex navy extrovert to an ex-PI to a stay-at-home Mom to a real honest-to-goodness lady and they all know that staring into space or having a long bath can mean that you’re working.

And they’re all fun.

My life has been blessed recently by the people I’ve met, either in person or online, people I’d never have dreamed I’d be comfortable with, but I am. I’ve travelled on my own, something I’ve discovered that I adore, I’ve been valued for what I do, I’ve read things about me that have thrilled me to the core, made me snort with laughter because they got it so wrong, or just made me plain angry.

But it’s all been fun.

And it all comes down to the writing. The day it stops being fun is the day I stop, and I don’t just mean the first day, because however much you enjoy what you do, there is always the occasional day when you don’t want to do it for one reason or another. It’s when I get up for, oh, I don’t know, a year of days and I don’t want to write, I don’t itch to get my hands on that keyboard. That’s when I’ll stop, but I doubt that will happen.

The publishing industry isn’t always a barrel of laughs. Like every other entertainment industry (and don’t kid yourself, that’s what we’re doing here) it has its share of backbiters, naysayers and Players in the Tim Robbins sense, people who love negotiating the shoals of nastiness that lie in wait to trap any writer.

But it also contains people who love writing, writers, the whole process and one of these makes up for ten of the other kind, because they give us the support and the encouragement we need. It’s because for every one published writer, there are a hundred who will take her place tomorrow, for nothing.

So I might not always write for publication, though I’m riding this roller-coaster with the most enjoyment. However, it’s not essential to the core of what I do. It’s not why I do it. If I lost all my publishing slots tomorrow (God forbid) I’d still write.

So that’s why I do it. It’s fun.