Writing: A Career You Can Fall Forward On

When I was 16, my dad casually asked me if I’d decided on a career.  I told him I wanted to be a writer.

He looked a little pale.  “You mean a journalist, right?”

“No, I mean a fiction writer.  You know, one of those guys who writes novels.”

He looked even paler.  He then proceeded to advise me, in a fatherly way, to choose a practical career I could “fall back on,” and that I should go to college and get some experience in that career.  Afterwards, I could “play around” with fiction writing, if I was so inclined.

I took his advice.  The practical career I chose was engineering.  Electrical engineering, to be exact.  With a specialty in computer hardware/software design.  You can’t get much more practical than that. 

Ironically, after only one week working at my first full-time job, I was taken off the computer design project I’d been assigned and was given the task of writing a user’s manual.  I was insulted.  By that time, I had all but forgotten that I wanted to be a writer.  I felt like I was being demoted.

Nevertheless, I gave the user’s manual my best shot.  I had no clue as to what I was doing.  I simply tried to make it as interesting and engaging as I possibly could.  If I did a halfway decent job, I reasoned, they would put me back to work as an engineer.  

I printed the manual out and turned it into my boss on a Friday afternoon.  First thing Monday morning, I was called into his office.  His boss was present, too, the department manager.   I knew I was about to be fired.

“Mike, this is fantastic!  It's so good we want you to rewrite all our user’s manuals.”

I was stunned.  And even more insulted.  I’d just suffered through four hellish years in engineering school so I could write freakin’ computer user’s manuals? 

“To be honest,” my boss said, “you’re a much better writer than you are an engineer.”

I quit right then and there, walked out of the office and did not look back.  But I found it very difficult to get a job as an engineer.  I ended up starting my own computer business with my stepfather.  It all seemed very easy at first, until we actually tried to find customers.  It turned out that to make sales, I had to do a lot of writing.  Tons of writing.  Press releases, proposals, advertisements, newsletters, brochures, telemarketing pitches...and, yes, user’s manuals. 

Eventually we sold the company for a tidy sum of money.  That nest egg gave me the freedom to write two screenplays and more than 20 novels, some of which you will find online.

I often hear parents advising their children to choose practical careers, careers they can “fall back on.”  This is probably good advice.

But at the end of the day, I don’t think you choose your career.

I think your career chooses you.

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