Live To Write, Or Write To Live?

BY ALICIA CARLSON

I love to tell people that I work as a writer and editor. Not because I’m proud of what I do—I wish I could tell people I was something really spectacular, like a cancer researcher, or teacher, or spy, or nun—but because of their reaction. It’s almost always about how they feel about writing. Often: “I am a terrible writer. I could never do that.” (Interesting. Must have had a mean English teacher.) Or, my favorite: “I love to write. I wish I could quit my job and just write.” (Because writing, of course, is not a job?)

Those reactions fascinate me because I am a writer, yet I don’t think I’ve ever uttered the words, “I love to write.” That doesn’t mean I don’t love aspects of my job. I do. I really, really do. But I do not write for fun, in my spare time, on the next Great American Novel. Honestly, I’d rather spend time with my husband or kids, walk the dog, go to yoga, or unload the dishwasher.

I admire (and maybe envy) people who love to write and pursue writing as a passion, even if there’s no paycheck attached. That drive to sculpt words into meaningful text has created literary masterpieces and fearless journalism.

But isn’t there something admirable in the mundane, workman-like approach to writing, too? Making a living by manipulating words into serviceable text? Taking a business-like attitude toward the job, and doing it reasonably well?

I’m glad the world has both kinds of writers. If you’re the first type of writer, you need an editor to help you from falling so deeply in love with your own voice that you run the risk of losing your readers. And if you’re the other kind—like me—you need those passionate writers to inspire you to lift your level of writing to something better.

How do you feel about writing? Do you live to write, or write to live?

Alicia Carlson is a freelance writer, editor and communications consultant based in Indianapolis.