What motivates a person to become an author is as deeply personal as who they fall in love with. For some people, it may just be a superficial desire; as simple as wanting to make some extra money. For others it’s searching for recognition or accolades, though there are certainly easier paths a person can take if they’re hunting for glory. For some people it might just be a personal challenge, or it could be something they’re attempting just for the sake of saying “I’ve written and published something in my life.” Other people might just have a story to tell and conclude that the best way to tell it is through the written word. In all honesty, there’s no right or wrong answer when it comes to authorial motivations.
In my case, my writing is a mix of all of those motivations. I would love to be making enough money to never have to wake up at 7 AM or answer a phone again by doing something that I genuinely love. The fame of being a big-shot author who goes on book tours and has fans who will stand in line for an hour just for an autographed copy of a book certainly sounds like a dream come true to me. Who hasn’t dreamed of their name in lights at some point in their lives? Nobody gets their name on a billboard or on the front cover of a New York Times bestseller by filing the accounts receivable sitting on their desk.
When I published my very first short story I put it out with a rather poorly done cover and it certainly could have been edited more thoroughly, but I wanted to be able to say to myself “I wrote a story, I designed the cover, formatted the content, and published the entire thing all by myself.” just for the sake of being able to say it. Smart business move? Hardly. Wonderful motivation? Absolutely! Not only did it let me say to myself that I’m a (self) published author, but I also learned several valuable lessons about how to correctly market a short story that I hadn’t already picked up from doing my research.
As for having a story to tell, that’s probably the most universal of motivations out there. Everybody has sat down and ruminated about how they would have written a book differently, or daydreamed about fantastic scenarios while they were in the middle of a mundane task. Telling stories is a universal human behavior. Sure, only a select few make a career out of it, and even fewer turn into superstars, but there isn’t a single person on Earth who can truthfully say that they don’t have a single story in their heads that’s worth sharing with somebody else.
Self publishing has been such a revolutionary change for the people who dream of being authors. I don’t believe that there’s anything inherently wrong with the idea of large publishing houses, and I think that traditional publishing is a model that still has value to offer, but self publishing offers a barrier to entry that’s incredibly lower than making a connection with a publishing agent. Whether this is a good or bad thing for the literary marketplace is a topic ripe for discussion in another article, but I would have to say that it’s unequivocally a good thing for an aspiring author.
While it may sound like an obvious platitude, the most important motivation that you can find is the one that motivates you. Whether you’re in it for the money, the fame, the ability to check something off of your bucket list, or just because you think the world needs to hear the story about a superhero who can summon dinosaurs through a nether rift from the Planet Zargoz that you thought was really cool in middle school, you have to take your motivation where you can find it, however you can find it, and use that as a tool to propel you toward your ultimate goal, whatever that may be.