Ten years ago, after getting a number of books published (as a ghostwriter) in my spare time, I decided to take the plunge and go into fulltime freelance writing. I talked to a couple of other published writers (one a fulltime writer, the other spare-time), and both tried to talk me out of it. And they were both right. My first few years as a fulltime writer were incredibly difficult. The money was small and sporadic. I had a family and a mortgage to support. But I made it.

I currently have some 40-odd books to my credit, most of them ghost writing for other authors. But I have also just contracted to write a nonfiction book under my own name, my own sole authorship, and I currently have my first novel (science fiction) completed and under consideration by both agents and publishers.

In 1991, two years after I began this harrowing adventure as a fulltime writer, I was lurking around the sci-fi forum on CompuServe, and one of the writers who was actively posting there was OSC. I had just purchased a single-volume edition containing both ENDER'S GAME and SPEAKER FOR THE DEAD, and I struck up an email exchange with OSC while I was reading his books. It was a lot of fun to be able to discuss the ideas and characters in the books with the author as I was reading them. I told him I had just been writing fulltime for two years, and he told me about his early years as a fulltime writer, and he gave me a lot of encouragement. Scott Card was one of several factors that kept me motivated and energized through one of the most difficult and stressful times of my life, and I'm very grateful to him for that.

If anyone on this forum would be interested in knowing what it takes to make a career as a writer, I invite you to check out my webpage on writing for a living at http://userzweb.lightspeed.net/jdenney/writing.htm

I don't recommend this life to anyone, but if you just have to write, if you can't imagine doing anything else with your life but writing, then my webpage will tell you what you need to know (this is not a pitch, BTW; I'm not selling anything, it's an informational website aimed primarily at people who want to write).

BTW, in case you're interested, here's one of my most recent books--I worked with Star Trek actress Grace Lee Whitney on her autobiography THE LONGEST TREK:
http://userzweb.lightspeed.net/jdenney/LongTbig.jpg

--wiz

Thnx for the kind words re: my website. I know what you mean about Links To You. It's something I subscribed to a couple months ago to see if it would bring more traffic to my site--and it's something of a jumbled hodgepodge of unrelated sites. Hard to say if it produces hits or not, since I joined a few webrings around the same time, including the one you mentioned, Writer's Corner (which has some very interesting writing-oriented sites).

My first few years as a writer were extremely tough, in large part because I didn't know as much about the craft, discipline and business of writing as I know now. In recent years, however, the business of writing have been pretty good to me. The informational pages on my website are a way of giving back and, I trust, helping some other struggling writers along the way.