The writer is in one of those few romantic industries people dream about. Nobody dreams about being a marketer or a salesperson. They do dream about writing, making art, or doing well in sports. The romantic side of writing has always purveyed, to some extent, but at the same time it comes into conflict with the business side of things. You try and buy a meal with dreams and imagination and watch what happens.
Can the romantic writer still exist in this modern world?
From the Past…
Look to the past and you can easily find lots of quotes about writing. Check Twitter or Facebook and you’ll see lots of these inspirational images coming up, under the #amwriting tag, for example.

One of those inspirational quotes I was talking about

One thing I’ve noticed is a lot of these quotes come from writers in the distant past. Compare the travels of Jack Kerouac to the average best-selling author today. One hitchhiked across America and the other checked their Amazon rankings, whilst conversing with their cover designer.
A generalisation, I know, but a lot of the romantic side of writing seems to have gone out of fashion today. I really only see it amongst people who have either just started or who talk about writing yet don’t actually do any of it.
What is it?
Much of it can boil down to that pair of rose-coloured spectacles people like to wear. Nostalgia is powerful and it can highlight the past as something infinitely better than what we have now. As we know, that’s not necessarily true.
If we move aside the foliage, we can see that much of this romantic idea of the writer hasn’t really changed. The writers of before had to go through the same processes as we do now. They needed to get their books into the public eye and they needed to make a living
But that Doesn’t Make it the Same…
One of the big problems I think we have today is that the Internet has meant we don’t need to experience life to write about it. I’m as guilty of this as the next person. I can zip to anywhere in the world and research any subject without leaving my computer chair. The writers of before didn’t have this luxury. They had to go and do things.
So some of the romanticism has gone out of writing, but it’s simply because we don’t have to experience like our ancestors did. You can write a perfectly enjoyable book whilst living under a rock (even though that might be painful).
The question of how much life experience you need is a pretty prevalent one. It’s why I decided to write this blog, actually. I came across a blog on life experience by Steph Bowe by chance. That’s also a lesson on the importance of reading!
This lack of life experience on my part is something I want to fix in my life, however, and it’s something I might be altering sooner than a lot of people might think.
Until next time…
James Farner