Words, Words, Words

I've been thinking lately about writing. Well really, I think about writing most of the time but I think about it in terms of 'making money from it and being able to pay bills.' I used to think in terms of 'this would be a good story, I should write this down.' It frustrates me that I think I have to consider it from one perspective or the other. Why can't I think about it from both simultaneously? 'This would be a good story, maybe there's a profit in there somewhere.'

This one blog I read, Volcanic Ensemble, the woman who writes it had a post a few months ago that I really connected with. She was celebrating x-number of years writing her blog and she said when she originally started the blog the tag (or possibly the name of the blog itself, unfortunately I don't recall exactly) was 'I promised myself I would today so here goes.' Or something similar. Let's consider that a paraphrase. I used to do that. Not tell myself I would write today, but I would literally write everyday. I had a book bag full of notebooks and pens and I would take it with me wherever I went. Instead of a purse with essential things in it, I carried a book bag with what I considered essential things. Sometimes, I would wake up at night and write something down, a poem or lyrics or a title, and go back to sleep. Something would come to me and I would write it down and go back to it later. That was such a good system. Now when I think of something I spend hours agonizing over it, trying to force the idea into existence. I thought of this great title for a sci-fi/fantasy novel over a year ago, and I came up with a name for a main character. Since then I've struggled through six variations of half of the first chapter. I haven't even finished one chapter.
This one's better: I've been working on a story since I was 13. I have never written an ending for it. The characters have changed drastically, the storyline has changed even more drastically, I've altered the