So, without having to waste decades on a lost case, or, conversely, without wasting your life in a job you don't enjoy when you could have become the next John Grisham

I will key on this statement. Obviously this is entirely a matter of my own opinion. In his book "On Writing", Stephen King tells a story of an interviewer on a television show in which he was asked "What advice do you have for young people that want to become writers?"

His answer (I may be paraphrasing after this many years): "First, most people that say they want to be writers, don't. They want to have written a novel or movie, so they can do what I am doing here. Be on TV. Be famous and loved by critics. They want to be rich because they wrote a best seller. Now if you put those people aside, what you are left with is people that love to write. So my advice to them is, if you want to be a writer, do what you love, and sit down and write. Every day. Whether you sell anything or not."

One of the things it takes to be a writer is a love of writing. Writing has to be a form of entertainment for you, something you can have fun doing every day, or at least with some kind of clockwork consistency that is nearly every day.

I would say the second (and secondary) thing you need is a knack for critical reading of your own work, and others. To see problems, or hear that something sounds clunky, or that the brilliant passage you wrote last week is not as clear as you thought. A story is a series of transformative steps: Ostensibly about characters, but really about transforming the reader and how they feel. So as a writer you need that analytic ability to see this manipulation of the reader under the covers of the prose and decide if it is working or needs work. Without it, you won't get any better at writing.

I say this is secondary because much of it can be learned by experience. But if you don't love reading, and writing even more than reading, then you don't have what it takes to be a writer.

Let me flip the POV here to provide a contrast. Suppose Alex loves reading. She doesn't aspire to write and never will -- she just loves immersing herself in adventure fiction. She doesn't want to work in the movie business, she doesn't think of herself as creative. Alex has an MBA and makes a very decent living as an accountant keeping corporate books.

I am introducing this character for a reason: Alex reads three hours a day, every day. She has twenty "favorite" authors. She is also married, has sex, has friends. She hopes to be a mother in the next few years.

For Alex, reading fiction is part of her entertainment in life. It won't lead anywhere, or get her promoted or a better job.

Now: Is Alex wasting decades on a lost cause? Will she look back on her life and think she wasted a quarter of her waking hours consuming fiction?

I certainly don't think so! For most of us, work is about creating the resources we need to entertain ourselves. When I was in high school I worked as a dishwasher. Not because I thought this my purpose in life, but because I really wanted the money to entertain myself in other ways.

Entertainment is a value in and of itself, meaning it requires no other justification. So if you find writing entertaining, then you are not wasting decades on a lost cause. Alex's reading is not wasting time, it makes her feel good. Writing without getting published is not wasting time, if it makes you feel good.

That is what Stephen King was brilliantly point out with a simple change of tense: if what you want is to have written, then you probably don't have what it takes to be a writer. If what you want is the money and fame and respect of John Grisham, and failing to get that means you wasted your life by writing, then you probably don't have what it takes to be a writer.

Because, just like my girl Alex enjoying reading for its own sake, it is nearly impossible to get good enough at writing to be a professional writer unless you enjoy writing for its own sake, as a form of entertaining yourself. So much so that when you look back on your life you do not feel that those unpublished stories were a waste of your life, but a part of your life you enjoyed.

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