I just finished reading blog post Paying Yourself to Write by Tami Moore where she in turn references blog post Paid Writer by Bria Quinlan. Bria suggests setting up a pay scale (e.g., $10/hr for writing, $5/hr for research, etc.) and keeping track of what you earn. The idea is that putting a dollar value on an effort that (more often than not) results in no income helps keep you in the mindset that writing is still serious business.

I think Tami takes this concept further by saying, in so many words, it's not about the money but about how you treat this gig. Whether you're published or not, paid or not, professional or not: are you acting like you're like a published, paid, professional?

While both Bria and Tami embrace the idea of the pay scale, I feel Tami strikes closer to the heart of the matter: it's less about the money and more about your behavior. In short, are you treating your writing like an actual job?

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Romeo and Juliet had name troubles. One of them a Montague and the other a Capulet (or perhaps a Jet and a Shark, if that's more your thing), their love was forbidden by the very labels given to them by their families (or by their toe-tappin', finger-snappin' gangs, if that's more your thing). But Juliet knew. She got it. Juliet knew that a simple label did not define her Romeo. "What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet." Call a rose a pickle, and it would still smell like a rose. The name does not matter.

Or does it?

I've read of several independent experiments that tested whether the name given to an object changes the way we smell the object. Essentially, smelly things (good, neutral, and bad) would be put into bags or otherwise hidden from view and labeled. Test subjects would then read the label, smell the substance, and their reactions were recorded. What happened? If you labeled a bag of cheddar cheese as "cheddar cheese" people reacted favorably. If you labeled the same bag as "body odor" people hated it. Guess old Bill got it wrong.

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If you're a fan of Cosmos or just an astronomy buff in general, then you've surely heard of the Drake Equation. Formulated in 1961 by Dr. Frank Drake, duly pictured here, it's a mathematical equation designed to predict the number of possible extra-terrestrial civilizations out there. It's fairly straightforward. First, figure out the average rate that stars are born. Next, figure what fraction of those might have planets. Now figure how many of those planets can support life. Next, how many of them do support life, and so on. Follow this pattern far enough and eventually the formula tells us how many Frank Drakes there might be in the universe.

Whatever number is produced by the formula is essentially meaningless, for many of the equation's factors are based on pure conjecture. But the general principle is sound: start with a large pool and whittle it down until you have the finalists.

If you think about it, variations of this formula can be created and applied to almost anything. Take, for example, the one hundred thousand people who audition for American Idol each year. A small fraction of those make it past the scouts. A small fraction of those make it past the producers. A small fraction of those actually make it in front of the judges. Another fraction goes to Hollywood, and so on. Eventually, you get down to the season finale where one person, usually Frank Drake, is declared the winner.

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The current book project is, indeed, intended to be a series of books. When I first re-tooled the idea last summer, it looked like it would span five volumes. While writing the first draft and approaching what would have been the end of the first book, I realized the ending I had originally outlined was fairly lame. Okay, really lame. It would have been as if Tolkien decided to end The Fellowship of the Ring halfway during the Council of Elrond. Had by some miracle it been published, it would have received reviews from some extremely disappointed readers.

So I combined the first two storylines into one, then checked my original outline again. Hmmm... now the third book looked thoroughly pointless. Rejected. So how about the fourth and fifth? Hmmm... yeah, these really should be one book as well. And hey presto! just like that, I had a trilogy. I can live with that.

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