Why Write?
A fellow Second Wind author posted a bloggery today about Keeping the Faith as a writer despite lackluster sales. It's a concern so many of us published writers have. The percentage of novelists who actually make a living at writing is ridiculously small, and to make matters worse, the top one percent of writers make more than all the rest of us combined.
When you consider how few writers ever make enough to quit their day job, (and this includes some writers who hit the bestselling list), the word "success" when it comes to writing needs to be redefined. Seems to me if writing brings you pleasure that makes you success. So does having your book chosen from thousands of submissions to be published. So does your willingness to write another book despite dismal sales figures. This puts you in a rarified group. Sure it would be nice to make money, but if we were really in it for the money, we wouldn't be writers. We'd be lawyers or accountants or even sales clerks.
There are good things about writing not being a paying job: we don't need to write to deadlines, don't need to worry about wordcount, don't need to fulfill anyone's expectations except our own. And that is reason enough to write.
Someone once said that the best thing a writer can do when they've finished writing a book is to write another. I thought that was silly advice because if you can't sell one book (or three), what's the point of writing more? I now know the point is writing. A writer does not attain maturity as a writer until he or she has written 1,000,000 words. (I'm only halfway there.) So write. Your next book might be the one that captures people's imaginations and catapults you into fame and fortune. Not writing another book guarantees you will never will reach that goal. It also keeps you from doing what you were meant to do.
One thing I know for a fact: sales do not make a writer a writer. Of course, sales are nice, but in the end, writing is what makes a writer a writer.
So, let's all keep the faith. And write.
Tagged: maturity as a writer, why write, writing
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Thanks for clarifying my ideas, Sumner. Expectations do die hard, though. When you've written a book you know will touch people's hearts, it's hard accepting that relatively few people will read it, that the money will still gravitate toward the big names. But sill, we write.
Thanks for the insightful post. How many young folks start writing with the expectation of making a million, and soon learn they would settle for merely making a living instead, or to even sell what they have written? Many, I expect. Writing has nothing to do with making a basketful of money. If dough is what they are after, they will be better off playing the market. Then if they are lucky enough to make a lot of dough, they can always count on the right wingers in Congress to assure them of keeping what they have made, in spades.
How many John Grishams are there out there, James Pattersons, Louis L'Amours, those writers publishers count on to produce huge chunks of cash for them? One John, one James, on Louis. Sorry if I seemed to be snubbing women writers. The writers I listed above are simply the names that came first to mind.
You are right in saying that being accepted for publication from piles and piles of manuscripts, might not make you wealthy, but is a wonderful honor nevertheless.
The rest of the writing world will skim by, never making enough to even brag about, and certainly not enough with which to wad a shotgun.
Dough is not why writers do what they are born to do. My Grandpap was the best oral storyteller I've crossed paths with, but he had no idea some folks made money doing the same thing he was doing. The payment for him was just watching the joy light up the eyes of his grandchildren and many of the children of the neighborhood as well.
Expectations die hard. But if a person want to stay sharp of mind, keep out of the rest home, stave off crippling mental disease she/he should continue writing. That should be payment enough.
PS: Look at the poets in this country. How many of them are rich? Money is definitely not why these exceptionally talented people write. It is more of an addiction, a love of creating.
Thanks,
Sumner Wilson