Born to Write

Annamaria on Monday

My first books were nonfiction, all of which had to do with my then career as a consultant in organizational effectiveness.  They started out as technical books on managerial endeavors, but by the forth and fifth, they broadened out to self-help books for the job lorn.  Eventually, I left all that behind and moved on to what I always wanted to do: write fiction.

From the very beginning of my decades-long junket as an author, people have wanted to talk to me about being a writer.

One, a class-make at a high-school reunion, asked me what I was going will all the money I was making from those books.  My answer matched his snide question.  "A couple of times a year, I take my family of four out for pizza."

Fact is, like almost all other authors, I am not making a living from royalties on books alone.  That was true for authors decades ago, and it has only gotten worse with the advent of Amazon and the tsunami of self- and hybrid-publishing, which have grown from hundreds to thousands to millions of books every year in the U.S. alone.

From the beginning, when people have come to me for advice, I have encouraged them, but also warned them about having high expectations.  Eventually, I worked out a stock answer to questions about earnings for authors.  Good reasons for writing a book (NB: making money is not one of them):

• You have something important to say or a good story to tell
• You will make your mother proud
• You will be able to call yourself an author
• You will be able to look yourself up in the catalogue of your local library, and especially because you can find yourself listed by the Library of Congress
• You could not stop yourself if you tried.

That last reason is the one that interests me most.  Over the past 40 or so years, I have asked scores, I imagine hundreds of authors (both published and aspiring, this question: How old were you when you started telling/writing stories?  Without exception, all the women gave an answer between age 5 and age 12; the men have said between 7 and 15.  All the authors I have asked report that as soon as they could write, they began writing stories - no matter where they were born or where they grew up, and no matter the language those stories came in, they had stories to tell and they felt compelled to tell them.

The only exception was a man, who may or may not confess here, who began by saying it did not think of being an author until he was about to retire.  But now he confesses that he actually began writing when he was twelve.

I admit that my research into this question is not scientific.  But I find it compelling.  There seem to be people who are born story tellers.  I know this about myself: if you held a gun to me head and threatened to kill me if I wrote another sentence of fiction, I'd be inclined to say, "Shoot me now."

This, I attest, is the real reason people become authors.  They have stories inside them that insist on being told.  I say, don't fight it.  Do it. Work hard at it. Hone your skills.  No matter the outcome, it will be worth it.

Besides, what other choice do we have.  Those of us who were born to write.