Why do you do it?

You are incredibly vain, and you have an overwhelming, inflated ego.

No, don’t worry, I’m not insulting you, it’s fine, honestly.  I have the same thing too.

You see, we’re writers.  And you can’t be a writer without vanity and ego.  Normally we see these things as negative traits, but for writers they are essential.

You have to be quite vain to want to see your name on a book cover, in an anthology, on a website (in your own weekly column….?).  Because to be honest, we all of us want, even crave recognition for what we do.  That’s vanity.

And it takes a pretty big ego to look at the quality work that is out there already, both published and unpublished, then say “I could do that, and I could do it better.”

I don’t know which of them comes first – the ego that means you think you can do it, or the vanity that means you want to do it.

There is a word for a writer who lacks both ego and vanity – and that word is unpublished.

This is a profession of rejection.  As a writer, you will get more rejection letters that acceptances across your entire career, and especially at the start of your career.  No person likes rejection, and it can be incredibly demoralising.  And again, it takes a strong ego to store up all these rejections, and say “you got it wrong – your loss.”

We need to be vain and we need to be egotistical, otherwise there would be no drive to succeed.  Talent is not enough.  You can be the most talented writer out there, but without the vanity that craves the attention and the ego that says you deserve it, you won’t even try to be noticed.

So next time you feel that twinge of vanity, or the rage of your ego, embrace it and welcome it as part of what makes you a writer.  Because without them, we wouldn’t even know that you are a writer, would we!

Are there other personality aspects you can think of that are normally seen as negative, but which might be advantageous to a writer?