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Originally Posted by Zubi-Ondo  I think the whole point people are trying to make is that if someone told you what to write, it wouldn't be much fun, and/or it wouldn't have much soul. |
Well, there are work-for-hire situations (quite different from the multi-book contract to write what you already intended to write all along), and those can be rather soulless exercises. Work-for-hire is when you have a contract to write something in somebody else's world, using somebody else's characters, according to a list of things you should do and can't do that is often the size of a book itself. This sort of arrangement is usual with novels built around television shows, or movies, or game franchises. Not only do you have to write according to very strict specifications, but you don't own the work, and you don't get paid very much.
This is very, very different from what Mary is talking about.
Many writers who accept work-for-hire contracts do it to increase their visibility, or just to support themselves while they work on their own projects. But I've met some writers who are very happy with this sort of arrangement. I was on a convention panel with a woman who was writing books based on a popular television show, and she was very proud of the fact that she could churn out a book on a three-or-four week deadline. When someone in the audience expressed their dismay at this idea, the writer became very defensive and said that anyone who couldn't or wouldn't work that way wasn't much of a professional.
Me, I have enough trouble meeting my own, far more generous deadlines, because I'm compulsive about rewriting and editing. So I guess by her standards I'm not a professional.