To what end? Does being a writer mean you have to have an endgame?

If I were a sculptor… but then again no, that’s not a good way to start off this post. Let me try this again for you.

Doing something you love but not getting paid for it generally makes you a “hobbyist”. If I set up an easel in my garage and painted, or I strapped a camera around my neck and traversed hilltops and valleys to take picturesque landscapes… or even if I took pride in a small corner of the garden and made a whimsical little area for fairies and goblins… Heck, if I made something with LEGO that wasn’t to the manufacturer’s design and displayed it on my mantle I would mostly likely be greeted with comments on what a wonderfully creative little hobby I had.

My occupation in retail is not something I want to define me to others, and writing is too much a part of who I am for me to really label it a hobby, but if you tell someone you’re a writer, invariably they’ll ask you; “are you published?” There has to be an endgame for writers in the eyes of non-writers it seems. I didn’t tell people I was a writer because to answer their go to question in the negative resulted in me having to go on the defensive, and to avoid feeling like a failure. We aren’t allowed to just be able to write for ourselves for the pure creativity in it. For the pleasure and the incredible sense of wellbeing we get from it alone.

I should at this point state that when I say I am not published, that is to say I have not attempted to get any of my creative writing published. In the late nineties I did contribute to a weekly e-mail newsletter reviewing episodes of US television shows. I also had an article on a now defunct US-based sports website in the early noughties on the subject of professional wrestling, and currently have reviews of CDs and DVDs printed in Trucking magazine (available monthly from all good newsagents).

“You play an instrument but you aren’t in a band? Do you have a record deal yet?” It just doesn’t get asked.

I can’t draw, paint, sing, dance, act, play an instrument – writing is my own personal creative outlet. I write because I love to write. Truly love it.

So, to what end? Can “for the sake of it” not be enough? That’s not to say that at some point down the road my aspirations will change, but that shouldn’t invalidate or belittle my desires now to just be able to express myself through writing for pleasure, to want to get better and better at it, as anyone practising anything would wish to do. To have a fun with it.

I’m only a hobbyist by definition. In my heart, I am a writer.