Why be a writer when you could be normal? - by Rosalie Warren
First of all, my apologies to Jeanette Winterson (who is, incidentally, one of my favourite authors) for playing with the title of her wonderful book Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? (If you'd like to read my review of this book, please see my blog, Rosalie Reviews .) Why be a writer when you could be normal? Why be a writer when you could be happy? Why be happy when you could be a writer? Why be a writer...? OK, that's enough permutations for now. But all these questions are currently very much on my mind, and I'm going to try to make a few clunky stabs at answering them here. For years and years I wanted to be a writer, but was, on the whole, too busy getting on with life to do very much about it. Six years ago I took early retirement for reasons of ill-health, and since then I've been, as they say, time-rich. I started (and continued) writing because I wanted to, and because it felt as though I had at least two-thirds of a lifetime's accumulation of stu...