Hack or Literary God?

Nathan Bransford had an interesting blog post the other day. Here’s the question that he presented to his readership:

“You go down to the crossroads and make a pact to have your novel and future novels published. You are given a conditional choice. Either you can receive the highest literary acclaim for your work, but a guarantee that you will never earn enough to give up your day job. Or you can always be considered a terrible hack, but make bucketloads of cash.Which do you choose?”

Personally, I fell into the majority and chose money. I don’t need to write the best flowery, deep, moving and meaningful stuff available to the masses to be happy. In fact, writing like that would undoubtedly make me somewhat unhappy. For one thing, imagine the pressure and tight critiques you would get. Ouch. Every time you opened your mouth you’d be afraid of using the wrong word or that you wouldn’t sound as brilliant and literary as you were made out to be by the press. Imagine the heyday when you stumbled over a word! I’d have to become a recluse.

On the money side, you get the chance to reach a lot of people (assuming you’re making money from your immense writing popularity and not your naked photos posted on the Internet). By reaching a wide audience, you are given the opportunity to provide people with hours of entertainment and enjoyment. Nice. Sure, there will people who say, ‘It’s only Jean Oram. It’s not celebral. It’s light. You don’t have to think.’ So what? I’d be in good company with writers like Nora Roberts, Stephen King, Meg Cabot. They don’t have day jobs to support their writing. And they reach a lot of people and give people a lot of enjoyment. For me, that is what writing is about. Connecting. And I am not saying that beautiful, deep, literary writing doesn’t connect. It does. And it resounds deeply when it does. But it doesn’t get the chance and opportunity to connect with as many people and is subject to intense criticism.

So, here I sit with 66% of Nathan’s commenters, leaving my ego at the door: Show me the money.