The Price of Getting Paid

Everyone who wants to be a professional writer has had this drilled into their heads by now — if you want to be treated like a professional, you need to treat yourself like a professional, and that means you get paid, son. You don't write for your friend's newsletter, for charities, or worst of all, just for the "exposure." But what's the psychological side-effect of all this?  Could it turn writing from something you enjoy into just a job?  Wendy Palmer wonders if that might be the case.  She quotes cognitive psychology author Richard Wiseman:

"The effect has been replicated many times, and the conclusion is clear: if you set children to an activity that they enjoy and reward them for doing it, the reward reduces the enjoyment and demotivates them. Within a few seconds you transform play into work."

She goes on to point out other studies that have been carried out on adults that show the same effect, and is concerned about what that might mean for us:

It should be stressed these are unconscious effects. And it made me wonder about the effects of insisting on being paid on the enjoyment to be found in writing, especially for new writers. I'm not advocating that just because we like writing, we shouldn't be paid a fair compensation for it, of course. I'm just wondering whether, in the early stages of establishing the writing habit, for the sake of discipline and motivation, writers should focus on the intrinsic rewards of writing itself, and worry about publication and payment down the track. Maybe the mantra shouldn't be "don't write for free" but "don't publish your writing for free"…

– "I do not write for free" — counter-intuitively damaging? « Wendy Palmer