For a Professional Author, Writing is One of a Career, Hobby and Passion

Writing has never been considered a full time job or an occupation as such. It is often said that the writer should have an occupation, which provides him with his bread and butter. He should write in such leisure as his occupation affords him. Thus attaching no importance at all to his writing skills.

This course was forced upon him very generally in the past when a writer however distinguished could not earn enough money by writing to keep body and soul together. Still, things haven't changed for him in countries with small reading public; he must eke out his living by working in some government office or through journalism.

But the English-speaking writer has the potentiality of such an enormous public, that he can reasonably adopt writing as a profession. The writer is a very creative and thinking individual. He doesn't only write when at his desk; he writes all day long, when he is thinking, when he is reading, when he is experiencing. It is a continuous never-ending process, which goes on in the mind every moment with constantly generating new ideas.

Everything he sees and feels is significant to his purpose and consciously or unconsciously; he is forever storing and making over his impressions. A serious writer then cannot give undivided attention to any other calling. By working like this he will not follow it to his own satisfaction or to that of his employer. The most common one that a writer can choose and usually does is journalism because it seems to have a closer connection with his proper work. But journalism might also not necessarily compliment the sensitive heart of a writer.

There is an impersonality in newspapers, which insensibly affects the writer. People who write for the press lose the ability of seeing things for themselves. Often they see them vividly, sometimes with brightness, but always from a generalized viewpoint. Just from the point of view of news that sells. The press in fact kills the individuality of a person. Writing should be a fulltime job with writing being the main objective of a writer's life. He is lucky if he has sufficient fortune to make him independent of his earning. But even that should not prevent him from being a professional writer. Swift with his deanery and Wordsworth with his sinecure, were just as much professionals as Balzac or Dickens. So a writer must make efforts to keep his skills and creativity alive always.