"Why Do So Many People Want to be Writers?"

The answer to that question is that "so many people" are convinced that they have something to say, and find satisfaction in saying it. The human artistic impulse, for which the Market provides such wretchedly little outlet, should not be underrated. Ever.

Still, as Upton Sinclair observes in Money Writes!, it is also the case that being a writer, or at least one of the few who can be said to have really "made it" as a writer, looks like a very agreeable way of getting a paycheck compared to most of the jobs the world offers--an alternative to a life of quiet desperation. That the stodgy bourgeois sneers at such desires only affirms the fact--the more in as a stodgy bourgeois highly approves a life of quiet desperation for the many.