[Billthedrill]

With respect, I think you're overly idealizing the nature of being an author, about which I know marginally more than being a songwriter or a painter or whatnot, so that's the target of my comments. It may be that nobody follows his Muse merely for money, but we don't live in the times of royalty, and nobody follows merely it for the love of the art either unless he or she has another meal ticket. And Johnson certainly did mean it when he said "no one but a blockhead writes save for money," it fed him.

At least you don't deny the sheer sweat that does go into the production of a creative effort. Why anyone should feel that they are entitled to that effort without paying for the sweat is quite beyond me - you wouldn't expect that of a doctor, for example, who follows medicine as a calling but still has the rent to pay. You wouldn't expect it from a carpenter or a chef or a landscaper, all of whom pursue their art out of love but also have a landlord to satisfy. Why ask it of a writer?

[wideawake]

Your points are well taken. But the best doctors are people who really take pride in their abilities of diagnosis and therapy.

The best carpenters are the ones who take great pride in their work and often do little "extras" that may be more costly or time-consuming.

The same goes for writers - the best writers are the ones who put in the kind of time and effort that no one in particular asks of them - they enjoy the work for its own sake.

I'm not saying they shouldn't get paid - I'm saying that no one whose primary motivation is to get paid has ever been a great writer.