Five Reasons To Become A Writer - The Creative Process

5 Reasons to Become a Writer

So, I've done my five reasons to not become a writer (found here) and I said that I would also do five good reasons to become a writer. Writing may not be an easy job and it may not be something that pays the bills every month or even at all, but it attracts a lot of different people from a lot of different walks of life and you may wonder why those people chose to be a writer. Here's my top five reasons.

#5 - WRITING IS FUN!
When you're in school and they have career days and they have people come in and talk about their jobs, the message I took away from those events was that you should like your job. If you love it, even better, but liking it should be a factor in what you choose to be when you grow up. If you like your job, you'll perform better. You'll want to get out of bed in the morning and go to work and you'll end up being a better employee. At the time, I planned to be a doctor, a dream I'd held since a very young age, but I had also dabbled a little in writing and while I didn't know it at the time, it was going to be something fun and wonderful and something I would enjoy getting up to do. Right now it's 6:30am and I've never been an early riser so that should tell you something! Writing is great fun, you get to create from nothing. You get to explore new worlds, go time travelling, solve murders, fall in love and all of those things that you probably wouldn't get to do if you were a nurse or a doctor or worked in an office. The best part is that you hold the key to where you go and you get to decide which characters to take along with you. It's fun!

#4 - THE RUSH FROM HITTING "PUBLISH"
As an indie author, I can only really speak for myself, but when you finish a book, you get a little rush. It's nothing like the rush you'll get from when you finally have your finished works uploaded and ready to publish. When you finally hit that little button to publish your work, that rush is mind blowing. You get to think about all the people who are going to come across your book, maybe buy your book, possibly read your book and then you get to wait for reviews about whether they liked it or not. Every positive review is another rush, another feeling of "I did that!" and there's little else like it. Writing is very rewarding in that respect. I like both the beginnings of writing and the endings, I like finally typing the last words to a piece I've been working on for months and thinking "I'm done!" and then when it finally goes to print, I like the rush that comes from looking myself up on Amazon and seeing my name there with my book attached. The biggest rush for me was when BLACKOUT was first published, but even though five other books have joined it on my Amazon page, I still get a little thrill every time I see that someone has brought a copy or left a review. There is nothing quite like it, which brings me to my next point.

#3 - IT'S ADDICTIVE
When you've experienced that "rush" from finishing a book, or pressing publish or any of the other milestones that cause it, you're going to want to feel it again and again. So you'll want to write more and more. Ideas will pop at you from everyday situations and suddenly all you can think about is how you can work that into a story. There are, of course, some things you can't write about, but that's a piece for another day. Whether you're a crime writer and seeing murder scenarios, or you're a romance writer and thinking of new and interesting ways to get the right characters together, you'll be influenced by everyday life and the whole process will become your addiction. It's not a harmful addiction either, it doesn't damage your health or cause you financial ruin, but you will find yourself seeing plots where people who aren't writers just see life. You'll want to write a book about this and another about that and before you know it, you're writing two books at once whilst taking meticulous notes for your next masterpiece. There's nothing wrong with standing up at Writer's Anonymous and saying "Hi, I'm Joey and I'm addicted to killing people!"

#2 - IT'S INTERESTING
Whether you're constructing the rules for a fantasy world, or going into the future and writing a dystopian piece, or even if all you're doing is writing a police procedural novel, the work of a writer can never be classed as boring. It's an interesting line of work and something that you will always find new challenges in. Whether you have a plot point that needs some work before it fits nicely into your story puzzle or you have a sub genre to add, the work is always full of surprises. I know that there have been times when I've been writing that I've thought I knew where the story was going and then BAM, left turn! Suddenly I'm in a place that I hadn't even thought about and I'm working a new angle and suddenly what had become mundane is now interesting, exciting and new! The joy of writing is that you can literally go *anywhere* so long as you can make it believable. If you're a crime writer, you'll be looking for new and interesting ways for people to kill each other and your page bookmarks will raise a few eyebrows should the police ever have need to look at them, but that's the thrill of being a writer, it is anything but boring!

And finally, #1 - IT'S YOUR PASSION
Most people who become writers do so because they want to, because it's something they enjoy and it's something they feel passionate about. At least that's been the case in my experience. When you're passionate about something, it is reflected in your work and the number one reason to become a writer is because it's something you love, something you find joy in and something that makes you smile. I would say that you should never work somewhere you hate, but not many people have the luxury to work only in places or jobs that they love. Sometimes it's just about paying the bills, getting through the day and coming home and spending their spare time doing something they love. You have to do whatever works for you, but try to keep that passion alive.

So, those are my five reasons to become a writer. I'm sure there are a lot more and I'm sure you can all think of your own top five, but for me, those are the reasons I get up in the morning and do what I do.

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