Since first grade, I’ve wanted to be a writer. Whenever I told others, I received a lot of responses, mostly negative. People told me, “Anyone can be a writer,” or “But you could do that on the side,” or worst, “Writing isn’t a real job.”
Writing is a vague term, because it encompasses everything from making a to-do list, to taking notes to writing a novel. Writing is something everyone does on a daily basis, in different capacities and in different ways. One of the reasons we as a society don’t see writing as a real job on its own could be because everyone needs to know how to write for most careers. And for the most part, people do spend a lot of time writing.
However, there are people who get paid just to write, such as journalists, screenwriters, speech-writers and publicists.
But we still can’t wrap our heads around another form writing-based career: creative writing. It is assumed that anyone can become a writer or novelist, and few venture down this treacherous path with no other profession to fall back on.
My point here is that writing, outside of being a journalist or publicist, is also a real job. As a society, we often consider most artistic jobs such as painting, designing, dancing, filmmaking and acting as not 'real,' so to speak.
In my opinion, there are primarily two reasons for this. The first is that they are not seen as economically viable. Income for a career as a writer is unpredictable. It isn’t as organized and regular as desk jobs. There aren’t set hours and no annual salaries. This also explains why we consider journalism, with some semblance of a paid salary, to be a real job, whereas writing creatively does not fall into that category.
The second reason is that because writing is often pursued as a hobby, and as a social construct, a job isn't supposed to be all fun.
Also, since it CAN be a hobby, it’s something that comes second to a real, paying career.
We tend to think of writing as a decision, instead of a profession. Some ordinary person makes a decision to write a book and it’s a one-off thing. We have a linear conception of writing – someone comes up with an idea, writes it down, sends it to a publisher, the publisher edits it and then publishes it.
We think of writing as something someone with an already established career chooses to do on the side, in addition to everything else. Or something they pursue when they have free time. But the reality is that writing – whether it’s poetry, novels, short stories or essays – takes time.
It’s a full-time job for many. It takes hours and hours of writing, rewriting and revising to finish work. And the amount of time varies from writer to writer. And while people do manage to write books while also having full-time, demanding jobs, there are also people who do nothing but write day after day.
Writing, reading and stories are so important to humans. Not only does writing allow us to record our history, our present and our aspirations for our future, writing allows us to tell a story. We all read, write and tell stories daily. Through time, we have established a tradition of storytelling. Book-reading and a thorough pursuit of literature is integral to our learning. Knowledge of all forms of literature is necessary for a lot of things – from references in television shows to participation in conversation. How would all such integral fragments of the vast literary fabric present today be composed, if not by writers?
We also live in a world where our famous writers and novelists are practically celebrities and are extremely rich and successful. The same applies to any other field, where the most dedicated are the most successful, and the most celebrated. So why don’t we consider writing to be as important as teaching, for example? The glorified professor and writer are both equally important in the academic world, and are interchangeable professions, where one cannot necessarily exist without the other. The point here, is to negate the idea that writing cannot be its own independent profession, and must be a subset of a more economically viable and socially acceptable career path.
It is up to the future generation then, to challenge society's misconceptions and preconceived notions that are damaging to our understanding of how to live our lives. Who says your job can’t be fun and important and demanding and rewarding? Who says writing can’t be a career?
