write and wrong

I'm in this class about writing for profit. Basically, we're all learning how to be freelance writers. How to market ourselves. How to sell what we create and earn a living from it it. Budgets, expenses, cold calls, elevator speeches. I don't like it.

Yes, I've never taken a business class in my life. I do not understand how money works. (I mean, I thought until rather recently that banks stored the actual money I gave them in a safe with my name on it. What happens if a bank burns down? Where does all the money go?) I pay attention to and invest in things I love. It spilled out of me yesterday, how everything in my life points to this blazing center of language.

I just now realized why all of this freelance/professional writing/technical writing/grant writing/making writing academic mumbo jumbo is metamorphosing into something really undesirable to me. I want to learn writing as a craft, not as a means by which to earn money.

Writing is not a quadrant of my life or a hobby or job. It's my lenses; it's the way I see the world, the instrument God has given me to see and understand and enjoy the beauty of His creation.

Yes, God has gifted me and blessed me and ignited a fire in me for words. But I think that's why it's so sacred to me. I don't want to profane it.
I don't want my writing to be property. In my metaphorical mind, I equate that to human trafficking.


I don't want to write to make a living. For me, writing is living.