During my adventure in Ukraine which your recall included a trip to Chernobyl, my fixer asked me why I decided to become a writer. This is how I answered. I just hope he's still alive. The Writer's Life is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
There aren't many of us laboring under the delusion that we're going to be the next Shakespeare, Thoreau, or even James Patterson, but the compulsion is hard to explain while trying to avoid well-meaning referrals to psychologists, analysts, and naturopathy. If they're not writers, the idea that we try to make a living out of ideas that come out of our heads makes some people uncomfortable. Friends tend to think we're a little 'out there' at the best , and at the worst connect it with the woo-woo of the supernatural, the afterlife, and ghosts. The best explanation I can usually come up with is being a writer is similar to the definition of an entrepreneur: it's someone who works 16 hours a day for themselves to avoid working 8 hours a day for someone else. (Oh, come on, Marley - help me out with the attribution for that quote, will you?)
There are those of out "friends" who had us placed neatly inside a box and that made them comfortable. And when we broke out of the box and achieved a level of level of success, whatever that means, it upset their equilibrium so to speak, and they were no longer our "friends," at least in the manner they had been. They were the ones to do something extraordinary, not us.
There aren't many of us laboring under the delusion that we're going to be the next Shakespeare, Thoreau, or even James Patterson, but the compulsion is hard to explain while trying to avoid well-meaning referrals to psychologists, analysts, and naturopathy. If they're not writers, the idea that we try to make a living out of ideas that come out of our heads makes some people uncomfortable. Friends tend to think we're a little 'out there' at the best , and at the worst connect it with the woo-woo of the supernatural, the afterlife, and ghosts. The best explanation I can usually come up with is being a writer is similar to the definition of an entrepreneur: it's someone who works 16 hours a day for themselves to avoid working 8 hours a day for someone else. (Oh, come on, Marley - help me out with the attribution for that quote, will you?)
There are those of out "friends" who had us placed neatly inside a box and that made them comfortable. And when we broke out of the box and achieved a level of level of success, whatever that means, it upset their equilibrium so to speak, and they were no longer our "friends," at least in the manner they had been. They were the ones to do something extraordinary, not us.
There's a little imp who rides shotgun on my shoulder at times that derives just the tiniest bit of pleasure from that discomfort.