EditorOne
Prolific Member
I've noticed that some people have tendencies to project personal experiences onto career expectations, usually with dismaying results. It's most apparent right now with all the younger posters who eyeball some form of computer science as a compatible career. They are deriving satisfaction from code and computer stuff one-on-one, nobody around, just them and the machine and software, mind challenges, all susceptible to resolution with pure thought. But that is absolutely not what a career in computer sciences is going to be like. It's going to be like working in ann business. A lot of the job is going to involve relationships, tedious processes with odious details, meetings, melodrama, egos, braying extraverts with narrow minds fueled by Red Bull and ambition, etc.
I think a similar projection occurred with my generation and previous generations without the computers: writing. I loved to read (still do). Just me and the book. And by osmosis some of that translates into being able to write cogently. Therefore I'd become a writer and enjoy a life of solitary productivity punctuated by occasional applause from an appreciative world.
You've already figured out what I'm going to tell you: That's not what a career in writing is like. If it's journalism, which I pursued, it's daily interaction with total strangers plus deadlines like steel walls and office intrigue worthy of any soap opera. If it's books, which I've also pursued, it's more about networking and knowing people in order to get an agent and a publisher, and then it's about marketing, than it is about the writing (although good - or at least "commercial" - writing does have to be there).
I'm just putting this out there as a possible insight. Learning from experience is fine, but if you can learn from mine instead you're ahead. :-)
(I don't know that pursuing both those forms of "writing" as a result of a misperception of what would be involved did me any serious harm, except that now I'm retired and finding myself chained down by social anxiety as much as any beleagured 15 year old in the forum. It's like my supplies of "I will interact with strangers" juice have completely run out.
)
I think a similar projection occurred with my generation and previous generations without the computers: writing. I loved to read (still do). Just me and the book. And by osmosis some of that translates into being able to write cogently. Therefore I'd become a writer and enjoy a life of solitary productivity punctuated by occasional applause from an appreciative world.
You've already figured out what I'm going to tell you: That's not what a career in writing is like. If it's journalism, which I pursued, it's daily interaction with total strangers plus deadlines like steel walls and office intrigue worthy of any soap opera. If it's books, which I've also pursued, it's more about networking and knowing people in order to get an agent and a publisher, and then it's about marketing, than it is about the writing (although good - or at least "commercial" - writing does have to be there).
I'm just putting this out there as a possible insight. Learning from experience is fine, but if you can learn from mine instead you're ahead. :-)
(I don't know that pursuing both those forms of "writing" as a result of a misperception of what would be involved did me any serious harm, except that now I'm retired and finding myself chained down by social anxiety as much as any beleagured 15 year old in the forum. It's like my supplies of "I will interact with strangers" juice have completely run out.
