If you wrote for a living, why would you give away
ideas and time for free?  That would be like a farmer
growing crops and giving them away for free because it
made him feel good.  True enough, it is a kind act; but
eventually he'd go broke.

I don't write for a living.  I'm a computer programmer.  But I do write, I
do get paid for it, and I *am* a professional author.  I have written or co-
written 7 books, and contributed to several others.  I'm a published short
story author (although not by much <grin>).  And I edit books, too.  Some years
I make enough off of this that the taxes on my writing income come out in 4
digits.

So why do I write what I do for free here?  Because like most authors, an idea
sometimes seizes me and won't let go.  And even when there is no professional
outlet for the writing that results, I like to know people are reading what I
produce.  In a way, fanfiction is in the category that I consider the truest of 
fiction -- stories told for the simple love of telling the story, and because
the story demands to be told.

-- Bob Schroeck, who *was* going to include his writing credits here, but 
decided after reaching 12 lines of text that it was excessive.
-- 
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Robert M. Schroeck         rms@eclipse.net          http://www.eclipse.net/~rms 
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"I am rather like a mosquito in a nudist camp; I know what I ought to do, but
I don't know where to begin."  -- Steven Bayne, Jan. 1960
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