Here is Booker – long listed novelist, award-winning poet and widely published journalist Paul Kingsnorth on writing.
Writing is not a ‘career’. There is no salary, no job security, no promotion, no pension, no guarantee of work, no guarantee that anyone will ever notice what you do. Writing is a calling. If you are called, answer. Prepare for a life of intense work at curious hours, likely obscurity and regular self-doubt, punctuated by periods of wonder that somehow make it all worthwhile. If this doesn’t appeal, try local government.