Five Reasons Why Writing is a Great Career Choice

For the past few days I have been putting the finishing touches on the first draft of a new novel. This will be my third finished novel, which I have been working on for over two and a half years. At these times I am always reminded of a quote from Brett Easton Ellis, "Writing a novel is not method acting, and I find it easy to step out of at Cocktail Hour". With this in mind I thought I would repost an older article giving reasons why the writing life is a good one, in the hope it will maybe inspire someone reading it to give it a go.

Reason 1. It uses your imagination

For me this is key. Any task that builds something out of other materials could be done by a machine. To imagine:  that is what separates us humans from robots and animals. And writing is imagination on the purest level. It is literally dreaming up worlds and sharing them, thinking about how interesting characters might react in different situations. Imagination lets us tap into the wonder of play we experienced as children where life was a game and every experience a thrill. What happens to this when we go out and become drones inside a corporation? How could we expect to be happy that way? Even the simple act of writing, using simile and metaphor to illuminate other people’s thoughts, is a wonderful experience and truly enlivening.

Reason 2. You get better as you age

Writing well depends on having a wealth of experience on which to draw; not just the experience of life, but also the repeated action of jotting down all that the narrator inside your head, or muse, if you will, commands. It is a task that requires the slightest physical ability - people who could only move an eyeball have written books - and as such is a long term undertaking that you can continue to improve on years and years after your sport-playing, pointlessly competitive peers have fallen by the wayside. How awful it must be, you can think as you watch them wreck their body, how awful it must be to rely on a physical ability for your happiness and to feel it slip away from you day by day, minute by minute.

Reason 3. You can work from home, or indeed anywhere

All you need to write is a pen and paper and some imagination. I like to get in the habit of taking a notebook and pen with me everywhere, or some pages I have already written that are in need of editing. That way I can pull out my work and be absorbed by it any time there is a chance. It makes journeys on public transport disappear because I am no longer on public transport when writing - I am in a world I created, having the time of my life. Even if you have no equipment on hand, once you have been writing and training your imagination it will burst onto the scene and enliven any dull walk to the bank, or tidying of the house. Your imagination can be always on, thinking of new story ideas and characters. You can train it to produce on a whim.

Reason 4. You can ignite some fires

Don’t write what you think will be a commercial success. Write about something you care for. That way the passion will give you the energy you need to succeed, and chances are, if it is a topic that makes a fire inside you, someone else will feel the same, and it could just be that reading what you created was the thing that turned around their life. Storytelling is a powerful powerful thing, and it has been going on since the very beginning, since evolution blessed us with a mighty imagination. Stories move people like nothing else. Something you write could change the world, bring down a dictatorship, and set people free to follow in your footsteps. That doesn’t happen if you work for a bank.

Reason 5. Fame and fortune awaits, well maybe… aka Non-linear returns

My day job is one that you could describe as strictly linear: outside of my timetabled weekly hours I can earn extra money doing roughly the same thing but on a freelance basis. But there is a limit to what I can earn because there are only so many hours in the day. This effect limits the wages of most normal jobs, which is not to say that is a reason against them. In fact, it could be argued that the regular linearity is a reason to do a normal job - be a dentist, there are only so many teeth you can pull in a day, but there will always be a ready supply of them to go around. Being a writer is different. When JK Rowling sells a copy of Harry Potter she hasn’t had to sit down and type it out again for herself. Once she has made one manuscript the book can be duplicated ad infinitum. The possible returns are endless because it takes a negligible time to produce each copy of the book and it sells at a profit. Now there is no guarantee in writing that the effort will equal the pay-off (hence non-linearity), but there is a very large tail on the potential income distribution: if you get lucky you can be a millionaire doing what you love.