J. Flores wrote to ask me…
You often suggest that a person has to love writing to be a writer. I find the process hard but the results rewarding. I was always taught that the most rewarding things in life are not the easiest ones and that you never advance unless you're willing to do the things that don't come easy to you and which may even be painful at times. Comment?
My comment is that I find being a writer is…well, I don't know if I find it easy. Certainly, certain assignments and projects have been anything but easy. But I never felt I was doing something I shouldn't be doing, whereas there have been times doing non-writer things where I have. But you can advance within your chosen profession. You can write better or more challenging things or venture into new areas of writing or new genres…and if you want something that can be painful at times, I can tell you about some writing gigs I've had…
But hey, listen: If you want to devote your life to doing things you don't enjoy, that's your right. I never bought into the idea that suffering and failure were great because they build character. And I sure never understood why anyone would say, "I hate math. I think I'll become an accountant."
Decades ago, I went out for a brief time with an actress who had the worst kind of stage fright — an overpowering kind that involved convulsions and projectile vomiting and shriek-inducing migraines and if you saw someone on the street with these symptoms, you'd call 911. Just awful. The night before she was to tape a short scene on Young and the Restless, she asked if she could sleep over at my place because (a) I live near the studio and (b) maybe I could keep her mind off what she had to do the next day so she could get some sleep. It was not at all a fun, romantic night. It was like taking care of someone who was going to be executed at dawn.
Being on TV and trying to become famous was an obsession with her. We talked about it a lot that night as I tried to lovingly suggest that maybe she'd chosen the wrong path in life. But with her, there was no other goal. If you weren't a star, you weren't anyone. We lost touch not long after that and I haven't spoken to her this century…but she isn't a star and I sometimes wonder if she ever found out it was possible to be happy but largely unknown. A lot of people in this world find that. I'd list some of them but I have no idea who they are.
So that's my comment: If you want to live like that, fine. I'd rather do something I like…and something where I don't spend any time wondering if I've taken the entire wrong approach to my life.