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*shrug* Lots of people don't make enough money doing only what they love. Even people who do love their jobs have to put up with sucky aspects of it (for example, I love my work as a teacher but had a positively grueling morning shepherding a group of 5-year-old Lost Boys through a dress rehearsal for the school production of Peter Pan. Hell on earth! Ugh!) Lots of other people supplement their creative endeavors by teaching lessons, doing commercial projects etc. Such is life. I simply do not buy the argument that authors deserve to be special flowers and avoid having to tarnish themselves with non-writing tasks. If you want to *just write* then do it as a hobby or be like Emily Dickinson and stick it all in a drawer. If you want to have it be your career, then you have to deal with it as *work* and do the marketing, the PR, whatever.
Personally, I learned through my dismal and brief career as a freelance journalist that I am a much better writer than I am a businesswoman, and I couldn't hack that lifestyle. So I write for fun, publish what I want to where I want to, and if I make money then fine, and that's nice, but I am not relying on it to pay my bills. In the back of my mind, I suppose there is still the dream that one day the publishers will discover me and I will be the next JK Rowling or whatever, but I don't really base my self-worth, identity or career prospects on that happening. It's up there with winning the lottery or inheriting a tom of money from a long-lost relative.
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