Swing and a miss

Professional writers are professional gamblers.

It is not something that we admit to. But when you examine the chances that we take, you have to admit that we are. We write articles and stories that we think people want to read; and that we, hopefully, can get someone to pay us for. We toil away in dark offices, being anti-social, trying to create something that will pay the bills.

Occasionally, we succeed; more often we fail. Even professionals who do it full time have eighty to ninety percent rejection rate. The full time writers make up for the low level of acceptances and bad paying articles, just like baseball players; we go up to bat a lot. Essentially, as the old economics joke goes, "We make it up in volume."

I get my fair share of rejection slips; if you don't recieve rejection slips, you are not trying. I also write my fair share of articles that turn out to be non-earning dogs.

I don't always mean to write non-earners. Occasionally, I do. After all, I am opinionated and think that getting certain information out there is important--even if it generates no earning.

But often like most writers I end up writing something that I think is going to do well, like articles for revenue sharing sites such as Helium, and the articles bomb. At those moments, my face turns red, and all I can do is swear under my breath as I ready the bat for another swing.

My latest missed swing was an article on the stock market, "How Many Stocks Are Necessary to Be Properly Diversified?" I thought that it would be a good money maker, but I can see already that I guessed wrong.

That is the name of the game, guessing, writing, and hoping that it is a hit that goes over the wall (netting a reasonable profit). Perhaps on another site, it would work better. Or perhaps if I was an economics major. Or whatever. It doesn't really matter. All that matters is that I keep swinging at the ball, aka writing and submitting.

It is not glamourour or fulfilling, but it is the nature of the profession that I chose.