Passage 2

Many a young person tells me he wants to be a writer. I always encourage such people, but also explain that there’s a big difference between“being a writer”and writing. In most cases these individuals are dreaming of wealth and fame, not the long hours alone at a typewriter. “You’ve got to want to write，”I say to them,“not want to be a writer”.

The reality is that writing is a lonely, private and poor paying affair. For every writer kissed by fortune there are thousands more whose longing is never rewarded. When I left a 20-year career in the U. S. Coast Guard to become a freelance writer(自由撰稿人), I had no prospects at all. What I did have was a friend who found me in my room in a New York apartment building. It didn’t even matter that it was cold and had no bathroom. I immediately bought a used manual typewriter and felt like a genuine writer.