It came as no surprise to me to read this morning that, according to a survey undertaken by Remitly, (a financial services company for immigrants), being a writer is the second most popular 'dream job' of those surveyed.
Remitly describes how they came up with this information: "To find out, we looked at global search data to discover the dream jobs of every country in the world. To achieve this we looked at searches for ‘how to be a police officer’ rather than ‘police officer jobs’ to show the amount of people in the ‘dreaming’ stage of different careers."
I admit there is something attractive about the idea of being a writer although having been one for most of my life, the gloss wore off quite early on. I came to understand some tough realities, first and foremost that writing is hard work and takes discipline. Secondly, making money from it was going to be a challenge and taking it on for that reason alone would be a road to disappointment.
I also had to learn that being rejected, time and again, was all part of the deal.
So I suspect the people in the Remitly survey like the idea of being a writer and if they were confronted with the reality of that profession (i.e. being alone almost 90% of your working day, being paid about 5 cents per hour, no sleeping in or flouncing about, being at your desk on time to write for the set number of hours) they might choose the number one job on the list: a pilot.
You have to be into it for the love of it. You have a passion that you cannot contain, a compulsion that drives you towards it, a willingness to take the knocks and keep going.
I encourage people to write, to become writers. In these days of self publishing, you can put your work out there for all to see. You are not at the mercy of a managing editor who will send you a 'no thank you' rejection notice.
Go on. Write and produce your book whether it be in hard copy or online. Enjoy that achievement. You may not make a lot of money but the rewards of your accomplishment may outweigh that in spades because you are a writer.
You're not just dreaming about it.