Why should a company pay you for your writing? In today's tough publishing industry, so tenuously held aloft by shredding economic tethers, this question has never been more relevant. If you are trying to earn money from your writing, you've hopefully given some thought to answering this question. If your answer is "My book is just like Nora Roberts," you're on thin ice— Nora Roberts is already doing that quite well, thank you. What do you have to offer the world? How can you make your writing important enough to sustain you through what may become many lean years? How can you discover your true material, that story that only you can write? The following questions, answered quickly, might lead you in a useful direction. 1. Let’s say you’re going to write a fictional story. Is your main character a man or woman? Why? Humans are intensely interested in this primal question: Is it a boy or a girl? And if it's not clear, or a bit of both? Ooh, even more...