Your essay is excellent and I agree, you are not alone . You are also in good company as far as being passionate about your work and enthusiastic about this wonderful, supportive community of readers and writers on Medium.

I do believe that one can be fully committed to a profession, love the nature of one’s work, excellent at it, etc and still expect fair compensation for the effort. Much like a student reaching A+ level performance. Fair compensation whether it is reflected in dollars or grades is just part of being good at what you do.

My point in the above paragraph? I think we all need to expect decent remuneration without feeling the need to first state that “ we are not here for the money”. Again, you are not alone in this one either. I see many writers state the same thing.

IMO, we undermine our reasonable expectation for decent compensation by insisting that money is not why we are here, that passionate writing drives us. If we are passionate and good at what we do, of course we should be paid. We do not need to put money lower on the list to prove that we are here primarily for the love of writing. Passion, excellence, success, fair payment are all in the same category.

I also think this is true whether one is a hobby writer, writing as a side gig or writing as a full time profession. Back to the student and classroom example again: Whether one is auditing a class for enjoyment or enrolled in a class for credit toward a degree. In education grades replace money. Both types of students I describe want the A.

The 4.0 or A grade or the money. All part of the package when doing what you love and being good at it.