The Writer's Paradox

This week, I wrote a story. It’s a really good story. I want to share it with you. I also want to get paid.

If I share the story here then you get to enjoy it, but the markets won’t buy it because what they pay for is “first rights” - as in the right to publish first.

Me posting it here amounts to me publishing it first, negating the option to sell first rights to someone else.

On the other hand, if I send it out to the market it goes to one editor at a time, they may take three to six months to decide that they don’t even want to buy those rights and send me a no thank you letter. The only ones who read it then are those few chosen editors in hopes that they will say “Yes, please” and send a check for that right to publish first and then I would be able to share here with you the link to the publisher and you would get to enjoy it along with an even larger audience.

In the meantime, it’s a waiting game. I lay awake at night, staring at the ceiling trying to conjure up another story and wondering if I’ll have anything at all to say to you, dear reader. In what seems to be the magic hours of creativity between three am and six am, thoughts come to me, they percolate and I am awake, scratching notes on a page as fast as the pen with carry them.

Some of them I’ll share with you, but I also want to get paid. So, off it goes to the markets and for you I have nothing to share except this tale of a writer’s paradox.

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