Why not be a Writer?

Why not be a writer? If the question sounds familiar, it’s because it probably is. An organisation called The Writers Bureau has been posing it in national newspaper adverts for years. You know the ones, they begin with the claim that “as a writer, you can earn very good money”, continue with the offer of a full refund of fees if you don’t get published and conclude with a picture of “Christina Jones from Oxfordshire”, an apparently satisfied customer, gurning above the quotation: “So far, I have had 16 novels published!”

The adverts fascinate, not least because no one I know has ever come across any of Christina Jones’s books. It’s truly remarkable that someone could have written so many words and yet been read so little. But then, as the one-time author of The Financial Times’s daily bond column, I know the feeling.

Then there’s the intriguing longevity of The Writers Bureau. Countries succumb to dictatorships and are liberated again, Federal Reserve chairmen come and go, Daniel Day-Lewis even gets out of the house to make a new film, but The Writers Bureau plugs on, steadily, throughout.

I understand, of course, that giving up law/medicine/banking to write books is a common fantasy, fed by publicity about the likes of JK Rowling earning millions from book and film deals, Ken Follett being paid trillions for trilogies and Jordan being paid gazillions for regaling us with tales of her moronic life. But, at the same time, isn’t the answer to “Why Not Be a Writer?” off-putting?...

Read atTimes Online