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Comment by paulpauper | Hacker News Reader

Funny how people keep saying writing is a terrible career yet so many want to do it. Most careers are not that good, tbh: low pay, bad work conditions, and or lots of hours. Top Substack authors earning salaries comparable to STEM execs, but have a platform (which is also worth a lot), full autonomy, as well as extra income from books and affiliate links etc. Not bad work if you can get it.

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>Everybody want to be a bodybuilder but nobody want to lift no heavy ass weight

- Ronnie Coleman

Everybody wants a high or cool status job, but few truly want to suffer what it takes to get that job, and in the case of writing, as with many things, there's too much luck involved, too strong a power law.

Even people who get the jobs suffer from them. I've met a lot of journalists and I live in fantasy land compared to them. In exchange for a small amount of meaning, they take on a lot of extra suffering.

Ronnie Coleman also can't walk anymore on his own because of those heavy weights.

That could certainly apply in this context if talking 20 years down the line.

Not many jobs still pay you for the work you did a month, a year, 10 years, or 25 years ago. Not many jobs pay you just to sit at home and make up stories either. Of course many people want a job like that.

But the actual day-to-day doing of it, well, that's quite another thing. And most of us just aren't cut out to be an Agatha Christie, Stephen King, or Isaac Asimov.

You see some of that in music and similar things as well. For every AC/DC or Guns N' Roses, there were a million garage bands who worked hard but were lucky to get a gig at a local dive bar or a family member's wedding. That never stopped people from wanting to do it though.

The point is it’s incredibly hard to get the the good work. It’s not bad, if you can survive the insane competition. Which most, by definition, cannot.

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