You might
have heard about the now legendary conversation between author Phillip Roth and
a newly
published writer named Julian Tepper. Tepper, who works at a restaurant
frequented by Roth, presented the older writer with a copy of Balls,
Tepper’s first novel.
Rather than congratulate him, Roth told him to quit while he was ahead, that writing was, in so many words, a soul sucking profession where you threw away far more work than you ever published.
Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love, in a new blog called Bookish, takes Roth on. Yes, Gilbert agrees, writing is a tough job, but any job that you put your heart into is going to be tough. Writing also has benefits.
“…you have no boss to speak of. You're not exposed to any sexual abuse or toxic chemicals on the job site (unless you're sexually abusing yourself, or eating Doritos while you type). You don't have to wear a nametag, and--unless you are exceptionally clumsy--you rarely run the risk of cutting off your hand in the machinery. Writing, I tell you, has everything to recommend it over real work.”
I’ve had a number of jobs in my life. The worst ones were those that were intellectually numbing. Writing is hardly an intellectually numbing profession. Even in the jobs I hated, though, I found a reason to like them, to make them interesting.
In the words of Confucius (and Harvey McKay), “Do something you love and you will never work another day in your life.”
I will allow that writing is tough. If it wasn’t, everybody would do it.
See ya’ later.
WhatIfYouCouldNotFail.com by Tim Sunderland is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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