This is Dr Tanya’s quote for Blogging Insights this week. I’m not sure that I completely agree with it. It makes it sound as if perseverance is all you need to become a professional writer and I am sure that there is a lot more to it than that. Some bloggers I follow have published books but I don’t think any of them said it was easy. Self-publishing has helped some get into print who may not have had the opportunity otherwise and if getting paid makes you a professional then I guess even making 99c from Amazon means you can call yourself a professional writer.

As a motivational quote it doesn’t work for me. Long ago I realised that I could not write fiction. I can’t visualise a story through the beginning, middle and end. I get lost in the middle somewhere. I think that if you don’t have the gift of storytelling then becoming a professional writer of fiction will be impossible and it would be better to work out what you are good at and write that. I like to write non-fiction, when I was younger, I thought it would be wonderful to be able to write for magazines. I liked the idea of being a travel writer. Maybe if I had applied myself, I might have managed to sell something to a magazine but as I had no money to actually go anywhere it was always going to be difficult to break into that market.

I am happy as an amateur because I write first to please myself. Blogging suits me as a form of writing and if I do get to travel somewhere interesting, I can blog about it. This blog is not monetised so I’ll never get paid for it but then I don’t expect to be.