If you want to be a writer, the proper writing goals are in order.

You want to be the next Hemingway, like me, right?

Maybe, we both need a dose of reality.

Because if you can imagine doing something else – well – maybe you should.

For writers are mostly bums.

And after a lifetime writing, you may have little to show for it.

So give up! Go do something else.

Of course that’s not what I’m going to do…

In reality, all that I aspire to is complete control of my days, and a legacy.

There’s nothing wrong with ambition. We all want to win Guggenheims and live and write in the south of France, or some version thereof—don’t we? But this can’t be the goal. If we are thinking of our work as a ticket to a life of literary glamour, we really ought to consider doing something else. When I was first teaching, a student came up to me and asked if she should become a writer, or go work for Merrill Lynch. “Merrill Lynch!” I replied. Not because this student wasn’t talented, but because she was even able to formulate that particular calculus.

-Dani Shapiro, Still Writing

The best part of being a writer, of spending your time writing, is having control over your day.

You can overemphasize lunch.
Wash the dishes.
Go for a stroll.
Drink a little bit more coffee.
Or, simply stay in bed.

The writing life is the introverts dream, if you ask me.

There is something special and wonderful about the fact that you have managed to shape your life in such a way that reading (things that you want to read) and writing (things that you want to write) can be considered “working.” It’s like writers managed to cheat the system somehow.

Here is A Day In The Life Of A Writer, if you missed it.

And yes, it totally sucks that you can do amazing work – and people still might not care.

We writers shape our own days. We sit at our desks in our pajamas. We putter around empty houses, watering plants, making stews in the slow cooker, staring out the window, and we call it “working.” We close our doors when our husbands or wives or kids are downstairs watching TV. Shhh! I’m working! And at the same time, often we don’t have anything to show for it. We have no guarantee that what we’re doing will amount to anything resembling art.

-Dani Shapiro, Still Writing