So Alice keeps telling me that I should be a writer.  Well we are all ultimately writers are we not?  Anybody who puts a pen to paper – or finger to keyboard as it were – is a writer.  It is only in our money-motivated society that being a writer means being paid for that which we write.  If I am published than I am officially “A Writer”.  My profession automatically becomes that of Writer.  And is it not in our money-motivated society that my profession defines who I am?

Right… not so much but really yes.

Here is the problem with being a writer as I see it:  if I become a Writer than I must produce writings.  If I become a Writer than I must produce writings that meet somebody else’s deadlines.  If I become a Writer than I must produce writings that meet somebody else’s deadlines AND are geared toward that which I think others will want to read.  What’s the point of being a Writer if nobody reads your stuff?  And so for me, as a non-writer the obligation to meet deadlines, the obligation to write to and for others will quite naturally result in a loss of spontaneity.  I might sit down to write something that I think others want to read but that doesn’t necessarily translate into something that I feel passionately about writing.  To have to produce a document on a subject that doesn’t move me, or perhaps the subject does appeal to me but I have not quantified my true thoughts on the subject in time to meet my deadline, well clearly that would be problematic.

This is why I do not want to be a Writer.  I will continue to write my thoughts when the spirit moves me but I am not attracted to the idea of being a Writer.

(For the record I am attracted to the idea of being a millionaire and owning a mansion and a yacht but that's another story altogether.)