Writing's pros and cons

The great thing about writing is that you are self-employed. The bad thing about writing is that you have to wait on other people to find out if you are going to be published. Then, you have to wait to find out if anyone is going to buy the book or like it, or read it, or keep it in print.

Ellen Gilchrist, The Writing Life

Ellen Gilchrist

Ellen Gilchrist puts her finger on what separates writers from wannabe writers — the willingness to fully trust not only one's own talent and ambition but also the willingness of many others to invest their money in what you write. Professional writers need both publishers and readers, the more readers the better, to survive as writers.

One can always self-publish a book that no one will read or file away a manuscript descendants may discover one day, but those writers who expect a financial reward for their efforts had better attract other people, people with money in their fists, to the project. And that can be an even greater challenge than writing the book itself. It's kind of sad seeing writers behind tables in bookstores and at book festivals trying to sell their last book, with nobody standing in line waiting to buy it, instead of being where they most want to be — at home writing their next one.

Most writers, including Gilchrist herself, must get jobs with a regular paycheck in order to feed their families until they hit the best-seller lists. And most of them never make it to the best-seller lists. William Faulkner became a Hollywood screenwriter. Ernest Hemingway became a war correspondent and wrote magazine articles. Franz Kafka worked for an insurance company. Today a great many authors teach creative writing classes. This is what Gilchrist did. This lessens what she calls "the great thing about writing," being self-employed, but it does help pay the bills between royalty checks.

Personally I think the great thing about writing is the writing itself, watching words form on the page and wondering where they came from. So many writers talk about feeling as if they are taking dictation as they write or as if their characters are making their own choices, which the authors are only recording. That's not what really happens, of course, but when it seems to happen ... that is the great thing about writing.