Kevin McGeary

    WITH the latest figures at 450 million copies sold and translations into 70 languages, JK Rowling is about to have even more success with her latest e-book deal. And when this happens, the literary world will have another wave of what the writer Clive James called “Harry Potter envy.” James described the syndrome as involving writers watching yet more queues forming to buy a Harry Potter book while burning their own work and screaming “what about me?”

    The writing profession is one in which success requires some level of fame. Writers make a far less practical contribution to society than, say, firefighters or nurses. For this reason, we can be an attention-seeking and shallow bunch. Chinese poet Xi Murong wrote that if writers wanted to make themselves useful, then every time they wished to write, they ought to have planted a tree instead. Pursuing a writing career can lead to financial dependence and lack of recognition. This makes it all the more grating to see JK Rowling dine with George Clooney.

    Earlier this year, literary wonder kid Han Han led a group of writers in contention with the Baidu Internet company over losses of royalties. When a writer’s work becomes popular then it is only fair that they should be rewarded monetarily. But in light of how precarious the profession is, I think it best that writers don’t see it as a career, or even a job, but a calling. The average writer does not achieve JK Rowling’s level of success. The average writer doesn’t attain even modest success. The average writer doesn’t get published.

    Creative writing, although a decidedly impractical way of trying to pay the bills, still possesses a uniquely important function. Academic Alastair McIntosh argued that taking an interest in the issues of our time is like pulling on a tangled ball of strings (the strings may include ecology, economics, politics, and others), and you can’t unravel one loop without understanding the interconnections with all the rest. Whereas academic and journalistic writing requires a certain narrowness of focus and restraint, creative writing requires megalomania. Now that human knowledge is so advanced, to become an expert in anything one must focus on a small area of a certain field, and suspend judgment about everything else. Creative writing can attempt to unravel all of those strings, or as William Blake put it, see the world in a grain of sand.

    People write for all kinds of reasons. It may be because they have an amazing story to tell; it may be because they want to be remembered; it may be, as Mo Yan confessed in the current edition of Duzhe magazine, to win the heart of the local mason’s daughter. But if you’re in it for the money, then petty emotions like “Harry Potter envy” are inevitable.

    (The author is a Shenzhen Daily senior copy editor and writer.)