Friday 8 April 2016

Writers and Money.

Writing as a profession is an easy thing. All you need is a laptop, a charger, your fingers and a will to never earn money. Premchand died in poverty, many other authors followed suit but, then there are the rockstars of the lit world who release novels like blockbuster movies.


Writing is a cruel profession with no scope for mediocrity. The absolute best (with some luck) survive while the mediocre ones pay to self-publishing firms to print their books which their relatives and friends buy out of sympathy.

The thing is, a mediocre writer doesn't know that he is mediocre until the world tells him. And the world is not that direct. It misleads. People tell you that you should write a book but, they do not say the whole advice. The advice actually is- 'You should write a book because, at least that'll make you ramble less.'

A first time author doesn't earn throgh his book. A second time author however, doesn't earn from his book either. If both the previous books are bestsellers, then the third-time author can buy pen and paper with his income to write the next one.

Now, bestseller is also a fancy word. 'Best' is a misused superlative here. We call goodsellers as bestsellers.

Writing columns in newspapers used to be a literary/ intellectual thing. It is not anymore. It is just something already famous people do to remain famous. How they got there? Only if I knew!

Yet, there are so many who write. So many budding authors. So many who have already bud and are helping other budding authors. If it is such a sinking ship, why is everyone rushing to it? One word- the glamour. It is the glamour of immortality. There is a 0.2% chance (very scientifically calculated) of your writing being pure genius. And if it is, there is again a 0.002% (so much science!) chance that people will love it. So, taking all the variables in account, and calculating keeping the value of omega as constant (because, duh! Science), there is a 0.00001% chance that you will succeed in your endeavours and enter children's textbooks as one complete chapter with author introduction. Your badly drawn sketch near your story will be the icing! For that! For that small little chance, you must write and write until your fingers ache.

Hope this was motivational.

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