Thanks for creating this thread.
I read John Scalzi's piece and all the subsequent comments. Before I launch into my two cents, since I'm new here, I'll very briefly mention where I'm at in my writing and life to give my comments a little context. Here's the opening line from my website bio:
I was born and raised in the D.C. where tourists don't go, a land of soul food and Scrapple.
I took an early retirement several years ago to see if I can have a second career as a novelist. I self-published my first novel as a Kindle book (the link is below, if you're curious). So while I'm new to the e-book world and this forum, I'm not new to life. Let's put it this way: I'm old enough to remember when Stevie Wonder was Little Stevie Wonder.
I think the question Mr. Scalzi poses is not phrased as well as it could have been. The word "rich" is an emotionally-charged one that conjures up, in some, the image of someone who will greedily accumulate as much money as possible to indulge in an absurdly lavish lifestyle, blithely turning a blind eye to helping others.
Not necessarily. My experience with human nature tells me that, after our needs were taken care of (like, say, putting the first million into an account for health care, which still not might not be enough), most of us would find places to send some money where it could help.
So there's that.
And surely all of us know that writing books, or writing anything, for a living is not a path to riches. Except for a tiny percentage of writers, everything we've learned about publishing tells us that it is not. Any professional writer you meet-at a conference, a signing, a workshop, wherever-will tell you that. Knowing this, anybody who actually sat down to write with the foremost thought of getting rich would be delusional.
To get down to cases, I don't EXPECT to, but I certainly HOPE to, make a lot of money from my writing. 'Cause, at the very least, mama needs a new kitchen and daddy needs a new career.
So I'd go with "hoping that my writing will make a lot of money" rather than saying I'm "writing to get rich." Put another way, I'd like to see a lot of zeroes on any checks that come my way.
I'd also take issue with calling this being a hack, as is done numerous times in the comments on Scalzi's piece. Hack has the very negative connotation of someone who has sold out for money. Calling oneself a hack, to me, makes it that much more difficult for a writer to defeat the neurotic fears and self-loathing that seem to come with the territory. I know the term is used humorously to convey the idea of not getting caught up in what-I believe it was John D. MacDonald-called the "Gee, ma, ain't I writing nice" syndrome.
I'm very much down with that. I'm a storyteller. An entertainer. And I say, utterly without shame, one who is hoping to be a successful commercial novelist, who will give you a good story for your money. But don't call me a hack. I'm not. I'm putting a Herculean amount of effort in to writing the absolute best book I can to make it worth plunking down your hard-earned cash.
The bottom line, and it's far from original for me to say, is that our primary goal should be to write whatever kind of book you are driven to write from the heart. I believe that if you sit down with the primary goal of making money, it'll always show in slavishly formulaic writing that no one's buying, because we readers are intelligent people, and we know crap when we see it. Once it's out there, the chips will have to fall where they may.
Thanks for letting me have my say. I'll close with the writing mantra I've created for myself:
When I write something irresistible they will be unable to resist it.
