What's wrong with you? You like writing?

What?

Did you just say you love writing? Wait a second. You cannot love writing. It is impossible. You are out of your mind if you think you love writing enough to do it day after day on deadline. That is ridiculous.

You cannot truly love writing enough to do it for a living. I love the deadline and the pressure it brings. But the actual writing, I hate it and I struggle with it everyday.

Of course journalism magnifies mistakes. And to a degree it magnifies creativeness. But don't go into journalism if you are one of those people who writes because you find it satisfying to let out your emotions, or because you are one of those writers who thinks their poetry is more important than the news. Don't even try to practice journalism. It will crush you. The editor's big red pen or embarrassing comments about your copy will squash your free spirit. And sometimes the editor doesn't find the mistakes, which leads to a bigger problem: the world is mad at you.

If you really want to be a writer, you've got to ask yourself what kind of writer you really want to be.

Do you want to be a writer who chases car wrecks? Afterwards you fly to the office and write like mad and edit copy after copy of the same story. And you see it in print the next day. You read the headline. You check to see if they changed the lead and you want to read more. But you do not have time to read all of it because a fire erupted, a car crashed and someone is coming in the office in five minutes for an interview. You have to cover it all right then. There is no time to think about how you will get it all finished. You just have to.

Then you must ask yourself the hard question.

Do you really want to be known as the writer who broke the story about the 13-year-old boy who was raped by a 32-year-old man?

If you answer yes, then you need to learn what community news is before you channel havoc on innocent idiots and act like one yourself.

Maybe this type of writing doesn’t float your boat. Well, get syndicated then. That’s what a wise and old UCO professor said. Unfortunately, it takes years to do and is difficult. (Ask the professor who told me, he knows how long it takes)

But I have a better idea. Become a commercial fisherman. Work out in the sun. Fish for lobster in the cold and extremely hot weather with nine-foot waves. Afford an honest day of work.
When you break a story about a 13-year-old boy who was raped, you don’t feel like you deserved an honest day of pay.

But pull 480 traps of crab 20 miles in the back country. When you go to bed that night you will know you put a day of honest work in. Your back will tell you so. And then you might have something to write about.

This type of writing is just as difficult as getting syndicated. Think of getting a fictional story published outside a periodical. Are you ready to accomplish such a task now? It takes some people a life time. Others are born with it. And yet others are not recognized during their life.

And even getting syndicated is slim to none.

But all those dreams of writing presuppose that you know how to write. Writing is difficult. And the best way to write is to go into journalism. And the only way to learn is to be forced to do it. Fishermen do it every day unless the wind blows. Writing is like being a fisherman. You’ve got to do it even when the sea waves top nine feet.

But instead of trusting the luck of the ocean, the tide and the moon, you trust the luck the machinations of fate bring. Because if you do not have an interesting story to tell, your writing is on the line.

But the point to all of this is that writing must be done every day. And the best way to write every day is to have a job forcing you to write every day.

It takes a long time to master the impossible craft.