The Writer's Life

The writer's life always sounds very noble and romantic.

But it occured to me that maybe the reason behind this was due to the fact that it is writers who write about it.

Now you may think this is rather self-explanatory, but imagine what an engineer might have to say about how the writer lives. Even if he thought writers were cool, if it all relied on him to propagate the occupation, it would live a miserable existence.

I think that this is for the same reason you have a large field of historians who study the history of history.

It is good and right that the people involved in a particular field should enjoy that field and study all of its avenues, but writers and historians have an extra dimension to the scope of their field.

I mean, can you imagine the study of the mathematicalness of math? or the orthodontics of orthodonture? or the science of science? Sure, there may be a handful of people who take an interest in what might be construed as such, but mostly they are ignored and told to get a life.

But with writers, not only is it easy to write on writing, but, since they do write, they most always have a more positive presentation of the life than not.

And the great tragedy of this is that any poor, unsuspecting reader who reads what the writer wrote, comes away thinking that to write would be a wonderful sort of life.

And alas, those few voices who shout against the tide "Don't bet on getting anything published, buster," are swallowed up in the swarm of people wanting to buy their book because it must hold some secret. After all, the authors themselves managed to get published.