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I decided to post this thread to share a bit on my own personal experiences and my reflections on professional writing.

When I was in middle and high school, I would write constantly during class. I would fill notebook after notebook with rough manuscripts, spending every moment I could steal away documenting my daydreams and thoughts. Writing to me was my own therapy and distraction from my diagnosed Social Anxiety and Depression. Because of these mental illnesses, being in crowds such as those in public schools made me quite nervous, as did participating or simply being attentive in class. Public school faculties are hard-pressed to deal with students with these social problems, so they usually end up putting untreated and (at the time) undiagnosed students like myself in the lower classes because of failing grades, despite any need for intellectual stimulation. I obviously detested homework, but all my tests and essays in school were well above average.

As a result of this, many of the faculty members who were only paying attention to my transcripts and not the content of my work would only notice my failing grades. These faculty members would be astonished when they noticed the results of my government-sponsored tests or essays. They'd say stuff like "You're so smart, why don't you try harder?"
Little did I even know at the time, but Social Anxiety Disorder is extremely hard to overcome without professional help. Combined with my Depression and deterrents made by the adults in my life, this made the prospect of being a professional writer (something I'd wanted to do until the middle of high school) appear to be a pipe dream. Even my parents repeatedly told me to find a job that paid what they called "real" money, despite my apparent dream. These sort of deterrents made my own thoughts on it more complicated than it should have ever been. I now realize my mistake.

I graduated in '05, barely completed more than a semester in college (partly due to my untreated social anxiety and depression, and partly because of financial troubles), and it took me two years until I decided to actually pursue professional writing. And within a month of my pursuit, I had an officially completed assignment tucked under my belt: a pdf that I assisted in writing and editing that has my name on the cover and I was paid for, published by a company you might not recognize, but is known within its own genre.
But I didn't make this thread to brag, it is in part about you.
What I made this for was a challenge to other writers, to you, to overcome your own deterrents.
In my experience, I've noticed that small publishing companies like the one I worked for, generally pay about 2-5c per word.
Here's an exercise for you:
On an average day, take all of your posts on Gaia and copy-paste them into a program like MS Word. Bumps, chatterbox stuff, ED debates, Guild stuff, rp material, whatever... take all of that and count how many words you wrote.
Now, multiply that number by 0.35. In only the amount of time it took you to post on Gaia, you could have been earning that much money from a publisher.

Please discuss:
Personal experiences, thoughts, writing career research you've done, or your Gaia Word Count Score.

I don't believe I have anything worth even trying to publish yet. I want to make sure I have a few good things, and a few more things that are... at least finished. I have an awful habit of not finishing anything.

I too had/have some social anxiety issues... professionals never helped. I got over (most) it with will power and a few bottles of saint johns wort.

In highschool had a thing with not doing homework, unfortunately in collage I still do. I'm working on fixing that.

I had the dream of being published, I still do. Sadly though, I know/think I can't live well of of it so I'm putting the desire to make money of of the few talents (well I'd like to think of it like that) I have while I learn something more profitable.

I guess I and what I think is practicalness are my only real deterrent.