1. Writers can be anything. We can be popular, rich, annoying, poor, intellectual, stupefyingly stupid, shocking, absurd, delightful, lazy, or workaholic. You name it, and there’s a writer who fits the bill. Can accountants say the same thing?
2. You can wear comfortable shoes and be a writer.
3. Eccentricities are annoying in people other than writers, artists, and the very rich.
4. You get paid to more or less live your life. That is, your life is basic fodder for what you do professionally. How many lawyers can say that?
5. You get to be a lifelong learner and your family will eventually come to grips with your insatiable appetite for books.
6. Your opinions count. You know how to do things that are mightier than the sword. You get to be heard.
7. You can change the world for the better. You can also let your writing change you for the better. Look at how many corporate people leave the corporate world more of a mess than when they started. That doesn’t have to happen to a writer.
8. You can work in a corporate job, but if you get tired of that, you can just walk off in a huff and start a new career five minutes later. What branding manager can say that?
9. People are often interested in what you do. True, they think you’re probably some kind of a flim-flam artist, but attention is attention.
10. You will know what few others on the planet ever get to experience: the joy of the well constructed sentence. Even if you don’t write it, you’ll know it when you see one. What a rush!

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