The Atlantic

“So You Want to Be a Writer”
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200608u/writing-advice

This is an amazing, thought-provoking article. And it makes me wonder if I’m going in the right direction. With the comfort of marriage now safely on my resume, can I honestly say I am far removed from this possible scenario?

” To date, from all your writing, you have made perhaps five hundred dollars for two short stories and a travel article. To finance school and to write your novel you have lived meagerly with little encouragement and have risked the disapproval of your family, who have understandably said, “Here is this girl nearly thirty years old now, unmarried, without a job or a profession, still mooning away at her writing as if life were forever. Here goes her life through her fingers while she sits in cold rooms and grows stoop-shouldered over a typewriter.” So now, with your book finally in hand, you want desperately to have some harvest: a few good reviews, some critical attention, encouragement, royalties enough to let you live and go on writing…

You would like to be told that you are good and that all this difficulty and struggle and frustration will give way gradually or suddenly, preferably suddenly, to security, fame, confidence, the conviction of having worked well and faithfully to a good end and become someone important to the world.”

It’s a harsh reality and the other scenarios presented in the article are very different but equally pointed.
I suppose the reasons touched on in that piece are part of why I leaned toward journalism. Because the purpose was obvious and the sense of accomplishment was inevitable. Looking at it that way almost makes it seem too easy to be considered a form of writing.

On a brighter note, I’m currently waiting to hear back about a full-time jouralism position. I’m be writing articles for an on-line publication. It’d be a consistent paycheck and wouldn’t interfere with my current writing business. Seems promising. Keep me in your prayers!

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