While discussing my writing struggles with a relative recently he asked an interesting question. If I was penniless and needed to put food on the table, would I approach things differently?

Conventional advice is that writing purely for money is a terrible idea, but with the odds of publishing success already slim is taking into account what’s most profitable really so bad?

Would I be willing to write something, potentially in a genre I’m not comfortable with, and in a different style to what I’m used to, if I knew I would get a cheque at the end of it? Would I even go the old-fashioned approach, or I would I go for self-publishing?

It’s an interesting thought experiment.