Me, for free?

In my experience, the biggest transition from hobbyist to professional writer is not one of achievement but one of attitude. Not merely in our attitude towards our craft, and ourselves, but also the way in which we view opportunity.

When I first started out (feel free to imagine the music from the Hovis ad at this point - Dvorak's "New World" Symphony), anyone who offered to publish my work, or just to let me write something for them, was seized upon in a frenzy unheard of since the shower scene from Psycho. However, wearing a professional hat will very often necessitate looking at opportunities through a lens of, "What's the benefit here?"

The Internet is awash with offers to 'raise your profile' or 'build a portfolio' in lieu of payment, often by magazines that then charge their readers for the privilege of reading all that free work. And yet...and yet sometimes writing for free can pay dividends - whether it's fiction or non-fiction.

It's important to bear in mind that:

- Not everyone is in it for the money and not every creative project can be run on a profitable basis. That's why we have an Arts Council in the UK.

- In an increasingly competitive environment, sometimes getting a free piece out there can not only give you a track record and a publishing credit, it can also give you something to refer other potential editors to. (Which is why, if you do decide to offer a piece of writing for free, it's important not to treat it as a second-best option or to skimp on the editing.)

- Something written for free can garner you valuable feedback, which can help you improve said piece and perhaps rewrite it for a paying market. You may be able to withdraw the original piece from the Internet, but check the terms of any agreement carefully.

Here are three pieces of mine on the Net, now free to read:

Fiction

Perfect Circle - a sci-fi story about a boy who discovers an unusual talent.

Saturday Night - Joe understands the importance of a rich, inner life.

When you comment, let us know where we can see a piece of your writing.

Guest Blog by Rosy Thornton - The Rights and Responsibilities of the Writer

Writers around the world have always been in the forefront of the fight for freedom of expression. Here in the UK, of course, we have that right, enshrined in the Human Rights Act and article 10 of the European Convention. Which means that as a novelist I can write whatever I want. Can’t I?

The thing is, though, that with rights come responsibilities. I was brought up on the feminist writings of the 1980s (Carol Gilligan, Nel Noddings and others) which critiqued the traditional, liberal, rights-based ethics with which we are all so familiar, proposing that the moral regulation of human conduct should be founded less on individual rights and more on a recognition of community, of interrelationality, of responsibility: a so-called ‘ethics of care’.

Oops, slid into lecture mode there for a moment. I can hear you muttering: what on earth has this stuff got to do with writing commercial women’s fiction?

Well, freedom of expression means that an author is free to write about whatever characters she chooses, and to endow them with whatever views and attitudes she wishes. Besides which, we have to be true to our characters, don’t we? We have to reflect the world as it exists. A novel is not a soapbox.

But my personal version of the ‘ethics of care’ tells me that the flipside of freedom of expression is responsibility for what we choose to express; that as writers we have a duty to think about the potential impact of our work on those who read it. Societal attitudes are influenced not only by upbringing, family, friends and workmates, and by the news media, but also by the ambient culture: by film and television, and by the books we read.

It is for this reason that, speaking personally, I would never write a character who held views which were intolerant (racist, sexist, homophobic…) and who did not have those views challenged before the end of the book.

Even though much of my work is romantically themed, I would never write a story in which a female character relied for her self-worth, her entire happiness, her 'redemption', upon finding a man. I would not write a moody 'alpha' hero who is mean and even cruel but whose meanness is portrayed in a sexy light – even though there are whole swathes of genre fiction pedalled to young women which are based on precisely this scenario. I would only ever write female characters who are strong and independent and follow their own ends, and are in control of their sexuality.

These decisions are entirely personal – just my own individual choices. I'm not saying other writers 'ought' to make the same decisions. But we are all responsible for the stories we elect to write. They do not arise in a vacuum. And for me, although the way I write about the characters, interactions and relationships I portray is dictated (I hope) by being truthful to my characters, my choice of story is to some extent prescribed by my personal moral politics.

Does that make me peculiar? Very probably. But this is me trying to be honest about a difficult subject.

Rosy Thornton is a successful, talented writer of Women's Fiction. Do visit her website here.