Many a young person tells me he wants to be a writer. I always encourage such people, but I also explain that there’s a big difference between being a writer and writing. In most cases they are dreaming of wealth and fame, not the long hours alone at a typewriter. “You’ve got to want to write,” I say to them, “not want to be a writer.” The reality is that writing is a lonely, private and poor-paying affair. Only a few writers were kissed by fortune, however there are thousands more whose work is never rewarded. When I left a 20-year career in the U.S. Coast Guard to become a freelance writer,