Should I write a book?

I’m good with computers, always have been. Knowing this, my friends and acquaintances keep asking me the question every computer-savvy person is all too familiar with: Which one should I buy?

When I was younger and a narcissist, I used to steer them towards the computer I would buy, which was always the performance beast of the day, an idealized monster I couldn’t afford myself, ready to chew and spit out anything you throw at it (the latest AAA games, mainly) like it was nothing, at least for the next two years, before it too became obsolete.

This advice resulted inevitably in frustration at the outrageous cost and scarce availability, in friends going elsewhere for computer advice, and even in people foregoing or postponing such purchase altogether.

As I matured and realized the error of my ways, and seeing how people still ask me which computer to get (mostly laptops, nowadays), I’m at a point now where I immediately counter their inquiry with my own: What do you need it for?

This ensures that someone who only watches cat videos on social media and writes emails gets the computer that does that without breaking the bank, while a beginner gamer can play the latest titles with minimal frustration, for a reasonable amount of money.

The advanced gamer needs no purchasing advice. He’ll just go all-in anyway. So will the software developer with more money than sense.

This little introduction leads neatly to the basic question: What are you writing a book for?

Let’s preempt (and destroy) the most common answers.

I want to be the next J.K. Rowling, aka rich

(Or George R.R. Martin, or Stephen King.)

In that case, the question you should really ask yourself is, “Should I play the lottery?”

To which I reply to you that yes, by all means, play the lottery and you’ll be better off. You get much better chances with far less effort. After all, several people win big every year, far more than there are hyper-successful multi-millionaire authors.

If your goal writing a book is to become rich off of your work, better turn around now, and start a business in the real world. Sell bread or booze. Play the lottery on weekends.

I want to be famous

The chances that your book makes you famous are correlated with those that it will make you rich. The two probabilities intertwine at the level of about zero chance.

If fame’s your goal, then lottery offers a better shot. You’ll get your fifteen minutes of fame in the tabloids, half when you win big, and the other 7.5 minutes when they follow-up about how easy money ruined you.

Art is a high-risk, high-return investment. In other words, you risk investing a lot and getting nothing in return (most people), while you also “risk” getting filthy rich and bafflingly famous (Damien Hirst).

I want respect from intellectuals

So you’re willing to forego fortune and fame, as long as you impress at least some people more prominent than yourself in matters of the intellect. Fair enough.

With the right approach, mainly by choosing the right field or niche, plus the heavy exercise of politics, this may be within reach.

Of course, it all depends on what you mean by “intelectuals,” and how low you’re willing to stoop on the political side of things.

I want to make a living

The web is chock-full of advice on how to make money as a writer. This advice is especially useful if you pay for it, although probably not to you.

Large recruiting companies (the likes of Glassdoor, Talent, or ZipRecruiter) purport that a professional writer’s remuneration, at the time of this writing (July 2023), rests somewhere between $50K-70K per annum.

It’s a living wage, for sure. If you’re happy with that, and you’re able to find the people who’ll pay for your words, this plan is feasible.

Just mind the caveat emptor here: You’ll likely not write as you imagine you would, your imagination unconstrained, creating miraculous worlds of fiction or tackling big ideas in new ways. The reality is you’ll have to write on demand, on topics you don’t really get to chose, in a style you don’t get to dispute.

Even so, this will be good schooling for your writing life, and you get to make a living off of it. Many now famous authors have started just like this, writing on demand for newspapers and magazines, honing their craft in the process.

In today’s culture of “content,” the need for writers (of “copy”) has exploded, so this may be the best time to contemplate such a career. With the advent of superior AI, it’s also the worst. Take that into consideration before you rule out a carpentry career.

I just want to express myself

This is probably the best reason to write anything, including the coherent whole that is a book, and not only because writing is by definition a form of expression.

Whether you just want to hear yourself “talking” as a form of self-therapy, or you simply enjoy creating through words, this is a win-win (or at least a no-loss) endeavor.

By all means, go ahead. At the very least, writing makes you a better thinker, and that translates to everything else. From that alone may spring opportunities otherwise inaccessible to you.

Only make sure that this is your genuine drive, not just a smokescreen behind which lurk the mercantile reasons above.

Should you write a book, then?

All things considered, yes, you should. You should write more than one, from a humble and hopeful position. Through the process itself you’ll find the better and larger you. You’ll expand and explode.

And who knows, maybe despite these stats, some dismaying, some encouraging, and discarding everything I said so far, you might just grab the muse’s ankle and soar with it to fame and riches, or maybe just towards a greater and stabler state of self-fulfillment and peace of mind, which is no small thing. Some would trade fame and riches for it, in an instant. Many do.

Perhaps you can go around the entire “money and fame” circus and win your peace with your own words, oblivious to worldly benchmarks.

Wouldn’t that be nice? Pursue it and find out for yourself.