{"id":1002,"date":"2012-11-30T12:00:45","date_gmt":"2012-11-30T20:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chelseamcampbell.com\/?p=1002"},"modified":"2012-11-30T12:00:45","modified_gmt":"2012-11-30T20:00:45","slug":"the-most-important-career-an-email-to-a-friend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chelseamcampbell.com\/?p=1002","title":{"rendered":"The Most Important Career &#8211; an Email to a Friend"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>I wrote this in an email to an author friend, on the subject of writing as a career, as opposed to other, more lucrative and &#8220;parent-and-society-approved&#8221; professions. \u00c2\u00a0I&#8217;m posting it here in the hopes that it resonates with other writers as well:<\/div>\n<p><em>Frankly, I think writing fiction is the most important, most noblest career anyone can aspire to. \u00c2\u00a0That may just be my years of wanting it so badly brainwashing me into thinking that, but stories are important. \u00c2\u00a0They change lives, they comfort us when we&#8217;re sad (no one understands you like your favorite book, you know?), they let us glom up all the experiences of another person, both the fictional experiences of the characters and the real thoughts and emotions and tidbits of reality put in by the author. \u00c2\u00a0Stories are transformative and allow us to experience change in a safe setting.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em><\/em><em>And writing is hard. \u00c2\u00a0You could take a writing class, turn in all your assignments, and get an A but still be a crappy writer. \u00c2\u00a0It&#8217;s learnable, obviously, but it takes a lot of time and effort. \u00c2\u00a0People often say it&#8217;s a ten year apprenticeship, which it definitely was for me, though I guess it depends on how quickly you get in your million words\/10,000 outlier hours. \u00c2\u00a0But that&#8217;s a lot, and that&#8217;s just to be publishable, just to start a writing career. \u00c2\u00a0And most people don&#8217;t have the discipline to put in the crazy time and effort it takes to become a pro writer. \u00c2\u00a0Everyone who&#8217;s read your books has a little piece of you in their minds now. \u00c2\u00a0That&#8217;s pretty amazing. \u00c2\u00a0More amazing, I think, than going to grad school or earning lots of money.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I wrote this in an email to an author friend, on the subject of writing as a career, as opposed to other, more lucrative and &#8220;parent-and-society-approved&#8221; professions. \u00c2\u00a0I&#8217;m posting it here in the hopes that it resonates with other writers as well: Frankly, I think writing fiction is the most important, most noblest career anyone [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing"],"views":480,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chelseamcampbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chelseamcampbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chelseamcampbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chelseamcampbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chelseamcampbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1002"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.chelseamcampbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1002\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1011,"href":"https:\/\/www.chelseamcampbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1002\/revisions\/1011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chelseamcampbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chelseamcampbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chelseamcampbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}