I’d like to write for a living. That’s always been my dream. At various points of my adult life, I’ve earned deaux to write, in various media. I even get the occasional royalty check for Olde Works. But it’s far from money I could eat on.
Writing for a living is not essential to my well being, since I have other abilities/experience that keep me employable. Plus, for all I know, getting paid to write full time might totally sap the joy and love out of it. Maybe the dream would turn out to be a nightmare.
Writing is lonely. It’s solitary, requires a ton of time to perfect your craft and complete projects, and can have very few dividends (or none at all). A writer who taught at Brooklyn College once told me, “The world doesn’t need your stories.” (He meant the third-person you, not me personally.) You have to realize that no one’s chomping at the bit, waiting for your next tome. You have to realize that no one’s going to pat you on the back, even when you accomplish something.
It is a vocation that requires a lot of self control, because validation probably won’t come from the outside world for a very, very long time, if ever. In fact, most factors from the outside world will be horrifyingly discouraging. Like these two items that passed over my transom yesterday.
There have been a lot of untruths out there about my health care plan. So I want to reassure the American people that illegal immigrants will not be covered under this plan.
