What's your price?

[craig]

I think I could quit writing for the right amount of money, but then it would have to be an INSANELY huge amount of money in order to sustain the lifestyle that would draw me away from writing...

With enough money, I'd spend at least half my year doing international volunteering and the other half of the year exploring the planet. I'd be waaaaay too busy and exhausted to write.

Of course, knowing me, I'd probably start up a blog. People tend to like what I write about my travels... So I guess I just contradicted what I said...

[Margo]

What does money matter when you're running naked through the woods?

LOL. I've tried several different ways of responding to this comment, but they all involved serious TMI violations. ;P

[Heather B]

Hahaha, not surprised Margo. Not surprised.

[dios4vida]

With enough money, I'd spend the other half of the year exploring the planet. I'd be waaaaay too busy and exhausted to write.

Don't you think that all of that excitement and exploring would spark new, interesting story ideas?? I'd love to travel and I can just imagine all the inspiration that would come from seeing amazing things.

My price wouldn't be money. My price would be a bargain from the Genie in the Lamp - "You can continue writing, or I can find you a cure for your medical conditions." I couldn't pass up that one. To be out of pain and be able to move freely, without braces, return to hiking and tai chi and all the things I've had to give up...<lost in daydreams>...oh, right! Post! Sorry about that!

So yeah. Money I'd probably say the same as everyone else. The number is so astronomical that it's hard to imagine. But a cure...oh, a cure!

[Mira]

I figured most of the responses would follow along this line, but seriously? Like all you folks, I get a certain high from writing that can't be matched, but hell yeah I could be bought off. You're telling me that if someone came to you tomorrow with a suitcase filled with $100 million (okay, maybe that would take two suitcases...), you wouldn't be able to take one for the team, start a school to counter inner-city illiteracy, and maybe appease your muse by taking up the piano or drawing funny faces on all your new pictures of Benji Franklin? Sure, it might suck for a while, but how does that old saying go? "Having more money than God absolutely buys you happiness"? Yeah, it's something like that.

Well.....100 million. That's a lot of money. For realies? I don't know - I could parlay that money into alot of stuff through earning interest.....I'd have to balance the good I could do with that money vs. the good I hope to do with my writing.

That's a tough one....

I could, for example, fund research to find medical cures, among other things....

[Quill]

Aw, a hundred million is chump change anymore.

I say any writer worth his/her salt ought to hold out for 500 million, minimum.

[Margo]

I'm afraid I don't care how many illiterate impoverished children I could help, how many charitable contributions I could make, how much medical research I could fund with 999 bzillion dollars. I'm not giving up something as integral to who I am as writing. That's a level of self-sacrifice that, for me, approaches self-destruction.

[arbraun]

I've invested too much time and training to walk away from writing for any amount of money. Plus, it's my passion, so if I hit the Powerball, I'd still write. Perhaps I could start my own agency then, with my books coming out before anyone else's.

[arbraun]

I've invested too much time and training to walk away from writing for any amount of money. Plus, it's my passion, so if I hit the Powerball, I'd still write. Perhaps I could start my own agency then, with my books coming out before anyone else's.

[Scott_Foley]

There's a rather Faustian element to this question. What price your soul? That's how it feels for me anyway. Not writing (no matter how modest my lifetime writing achievement might be) would be like selling my soul. I would choose writing... what is money anyway, and how can you buy what cannot be bought?