“Are you going to become a famous author?” Jamie asked, halfway through her scoop of cookies and cream.
I looked up from my cup of spumoni and winked at her. “Maybe,” I said. “Maybe one day.”
“Like after you die?”
“Hopefully before.”
Jamie tugged at the wrapper on her ice cream cone. “But some authors don’t become famous until after they’re dead.”
“That’s true. In fact, some of us decide to become writers specifically because we want to create work that will outlive us; books that can be read for years and years even after we’re gone.”
Jamie wrinkled her nose. “But then you’ll look down on all the readers and future writers. And especially me.”
Go and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here. Make. Good. Art.
A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul, and that, I am sure, is why he does it.
Being a writer is a very peculiar sort of a job: it’s always you versus a blank sheet of paper (or a blank screen) and quite often the blank piece of paper wins. It has no job security of any kind, and depends mostly on whether or not you can, like Scheherazade, tell the stories each night that’ll keep you alive until tomorrow. There are undoubtedly hundreds of easier, less stressful, more straightforward jobs in the world. Personally, I can’t think of anything else I’d rather do, but that’s me.
