You wanna get paid for it? Be professional.

Everyone deserves to be paid for their work. You should be paid for every story you write, every game you develop, every painting you create. Your labor has value and worth. If you're going to do it, please, for the love of all that is holy, _make it good_.<br><br>You want to get paid for your creative writing? Be professional.<br><br>Here are some guidelines to be professional:<br><br>- **Write in a legible font.** Use Times New Roman, Arial, Courier, or Garamond. If your font looks like it was scribbled by a toddler, hire a babysitter. No one wants to read, "I Can Has Cheezburger?" font. If it's unreadable, it's going straight in the trash.<br><br>- **Spell-check is not enough.** Grammar-check is not enough. Be proactive in your writing. If you've never read a style guide, get off your ass and head to your local bookstore. If you've never read a style guide but claim to be a freelance editor, get off your ass and _learn your craft_.<br><br>- **You can't just throw commas in.** Commas are not spacers. Commas are used to, in some cases, offset non-restrictive clauses from the rest of the sentence (like this sentence). Commas are used to separate items. Commas are used to indicate breaks between independent clauses connected by conjunctions. There are tons of rules for commas, and if you don't know them all, _learn them_.<br><br>- **You can't just throw semicolons in.** Semicolons are not, contrary to popular belief, stronger commas. Semicolons indicate a stronger break than a comma, but a weaker one than a period. Semicolons are used to separate independent clauses (i.e., clauses that have a subject and a verb) that are connected by a conjunction or separated by conjunctive adverbs. There are tons of rules for semicolons, and if you don't know them all, _learn them_.<br><br>- **Apostrophes are not spacers.** Apostrophes are used to indicate possession (like "Daniel's car") or to form a contraction (like "because it isn't"). Apostrophes are not, I repeat NOT, spacers used to separate words. Apostrophes are not used to pluralize nouns. Apostrophes are used to indicate possession, form a contraction, or, in poetic cases, indicate a missing letter. If you think apostrophes are spacers, please, for the love of all that is holy, hire a babysitter.<br><br>- **Read your story aloud.** If it doesn't sound right, it doesn't look right. The biggest mistake made by wanna-be writers is their inability to say what they mean and mean what they say.<br><br>- **Hire a beta reader.** Just because it sounds right to you doesn't mean it actually is. You know what you're trying to say, but others might not. If you don't have any beta readers, hire professionals. If you can't hire professionals, head to your local university and ask an English major to trade labor. If you don't want to do it right, you're wasting your time.<br><br>- **Edit as you go.** If you don't know what "editing as you go" means, get off your ass and learn. If you don't want to learn to properly write, you're wasting your time.<br><br>- **Indents are not made by pressing the space bar.** For some reason, many people think that holding down the spacebar makes an indent. This is the stupidest, most asinine, most fucking moronic thing you could do to your manuscript. If you want to indent a paragraph, use the indent key. If you want to indent a line, use the formula in your word processor to create a hanging indent. If you don't know how, hire a babysitter.<br><br>- **Don't be an ass.** If someone tells you that your story needs to be proofread, there's a good chance that your story needs to be proofread. If a publisher rejects your work, maybe it's because it's bad. If an editor tells you that your story sucks, maybe it's because your story sucks.<br><br>The bottom line is this: if you want to be paid for your writing, _make your writing worth paying for_. If you want to be a professional writer, _be professional_.