As I near the June graduation date for my MFA degree, people often ask me, “What are you going to do with that?”

“Write a best-selling novel, of course,” I say.

My husband nods his head and cites the success of authors such as Stephanie Meyers, Stephen King, and James Patterson.  The tens of thousands of dollars invested in my education will surely pay off, and he will be able to retire from his full-time job by 50.

But let’s face it.  We don’t all get to be one of the world’s highest-paid authors.  Just like very few actors get to be George Clooney or Julia Roberts.  So, what are the rest of us supposed to do?

A friend of mine works as a proofreader, an editor, a copywriter, and a ghostwriter.  These are all dream jobs, in my opinion, short of becoming a best-selling fiction author.  So, I was surprised when she told me that people have implied her profession – particularly the ghostwriting portion of it – is akin to prostitution.  In their minds, writing under someone else’s name has shame attached to it.

As fiction writers, we make hardly any money on our work, especially in the beginning.  We spend time writing and submitting to journals, most of which will reject us, and we will make very little (if any) money when the stories are accepted.  Also, we spend many years writing novels that, when complete, could sit on our hard drives for decades as the rejection letters pile up.  We can only hope that each story is better than the next, and maybe one day we will earn a living in our craft.

In the meantime, most of us have to work.  We could hold day jobs doing something unrelated to writing, such as accounting, sales, engineering, or teaching.  In fact, any profession we might choose offers material for our fiction.  Or we could spend our days doing what we love best: writing.

I choose the latter.  I have started freelancing as a copywriter for businesses.  My assignments don’t help me with character development or plot, but they allow me to practice meeting deadlines, organizing my thoughts, and choosing words for better clarity.  Working on others’ projects has improved my writing discipline, and my own stories have gotten better.

So, think what you want.  My services are for sale.  I would even – gasp – ghostwrite a book if I had the opportunity.  When a potential client asks me what kind of writer I am, I will lean over and whisper into his ear, “What kind of writer do you want me to be?”