I've had to live with women all my life. I grew up with four older sisters, and I was the baby and the only boy.
Original work has no floor and no ceiling. You can reach essentially zero readers or millions.
Cale is my signature character in the Forgotten Realms. The most popular character I've written. He's a thief, an assassin, and eventually, a priest who stabs his own god in the chest. Always trying to slip his past, but never succeeding. Dark dude. Brooding dude. Born killer. But honorable, still.
I like to keep the world, to some degree, an implied setting.
I enjoyed The Mirage by M. Ruff. I'm reading Edgar Rice Burrough's Princess Of Mars right and loving it.
I loved The Weird (one of the stories in it inspired Blackalley in Discourse).
Shared world has done some world building and brings (in the case of FR and SW) a big audience. With your own work, you're more creatively free. In a way, the shared world stuff has a high floor but a ceiling.
Worry is interest paid in advance on a debt that never comes due.
I think a New Guard-type of Republican - Eric Cantor is a rising star in the party.
God is not usually a burning bush in my life. He's usually a very quiet whisper. And he never shows up too early. . . but he's also never late, either.
The purpose of work is not to make money. The purpose of work is to make the workers, whether working stiffs or top executives, feel good about life.