Whenever I am in public or when reading articles about writing in newspapers or on the Internet, I find that writing as a profession is buried under murky waters. Any talk about writing is a great conversation stopper. Whenever somebody asks you gleefully, ‘oh, what do you do?’ and you say that you’re a writer, that sure puts a definite stop on the conversation and you stand there staring at a blank face. Nobody minds that, but I do mind when I read articles about writing in some of the leading newspapers because from there you expect something educating.

The gist is that most people are ignorant about the nuances of writing. Writing is generalized and there seems to be no knowledge about its various categories. Headings like – ‘Earn Rs.10,000 per month through writing’ or ‘It’s not vanity publishing, it’s self-publishing’ or ‘Your book can sell like hotcakes’ etc. irritate and sometimes disappoint me.

Of course, you can earn money through writing, but you need to understand what kind of writing that would be. Writing letters the whole day is writing, but that is what it is – letter writing. Yes, you can earn 10,000+ every month only if you write commercial articles the whole month. Anybody with good knowledge of English can earn good money through outsourcing nowadays. What’s the big deal?

There are many kinds of writings and there are numerous kinds of writers. It’s much like sports. Every player is a sportsman, but he plays only one game. It can be football, cricket, golf, billiards, hockey, boxing and so on. It is not fair to generalize comments and say that sportsmen make big money. All sportsmen don’t, cricketers do, tennis players do, but our hockey players don’t. The same is with writing. You’ve got fiction writers, non-fiction writers, technical writers, bloggers, ghostwriters, journalistic writing and so on.

In fiction we have:                                 In non-fiction we have:
Horror writers                                        Autobiography
Children’s writes                                   Biography
Juvenile                                                  Historical
Sci-fi                                                      How-to
Adventure                                              Self-help
Mystery                                                  Religious
Thriller                                                   Educational
Comedy
Fantasy
 
A writer, if he is not just writing for commercial purposes, can only be one of these. A literary writer will seldom write a sci-fi or a fantasy in her entire life. There is specialization in writing, as in every other profession. An accountant cannot be expected to do a manger’s job. But seeing people’s blank faces and media’s crappy articles, I must stick to – I write books, and keep my mouth shut.