The Art of Balancing Writing as a Purpose and a Goal

I was eight years old when I realized I wanted to be a writer. The moment was such an awakening that the memory remains crisp in my mind. I stood at the back of my second grade classroom eyeing a Beauty and the Beast Little Golden Book, one I was deciding to reread again for the hundredth time. I remember being very aware of the joy it brought me to read that book and of the thought that came next: I want to make people feel this way.

Fast forward some years: I still loved to read, and I still wanted to be a writer. But now I was witnessing crowds line up block after block at midnight, outside bookstores, just to be able to be one of the first to get their hands on the latest Harry Potter book. I was young, impressionable and my eyes were wide and glassy as I took in J.K. Rowling’s magnanimous influence (you know, back in the early 2000s when she was still the open-minded, tolerant writer we all knew and loved — but I digress). I came to the conclusion that being a writer was only worth it if you gained this level of success. Who wants to write a mediocre book that only a few people will read? Why would I put that much time and energy working on something that will give me crumbs in return?

This is what we’re taught, after all. As kids, we’re told we can be anything we want, but the fine print always reads: only as long as…