I love writing fiction. My characters and plots are an essential part of my life and I spend hours and hours everyday thinking about them. It wouldn’t be too exaggerated to say that I can’t live without telling stories.

Today is NaNoWriMo’s last day. To those who are unfamiliar with it, NaNoWriMo is a great event that takes place every year on November. During this month all participants are supposed to do their best in order to write a 50,000-word novel. As you must have guessed, I’m a huge NaNoWriMo enthusiast. However, my enthusiasm wasn’t enough to help me reach my goal. So far I haven’t even surpassed the 2,000 words mark. This means that I will not be listed in this year’s winners list. And I won’t lie to you: it was my fault, because I have totally neglected my novel.

Now you may be wondering why I have acted this way when writing fiction is so important to me.

The answer is really very simple: we all have certain priorities in life. I have decided that my priority is to find a way to quit my day job. To achieve this, I must find another source of income. Unfortunately, fiction won’t help me much. Although it is possible to earn a living writing short stories and novels, this is not for everyone. This may or may not be for me, but it would probably take me a long time to find it out, and I cannot wait for that long. By writing non-fiction I stand a much better chance to earn money. In fact, it has already happened. So, as you can see, results were concrete — and much faster — in this case. Unfortunately, fiction has never earned me a single penny.

Right now I’m not doing what I like best, but rather what I need to. And I don’t regret it. After all, when I’m finally able to quit my day job I’ll have more time for my writing activities. And those will include both the articles I write for money and the stories I write for love.

Karen Zara

Filed under: Writing