As I see it, very few people "write" for a living. If they're novelists, they're entertainers. They entertain, for a living. Most novels are read for pure enjoyment, for pleasure. Readers don't purchase words, per se, or seek to make a donation to needy, deserving, authors. Book buyers are after the feelings, imagery, and transcendence that novels and their authors facilitate.

How-to and self-help books are purchased, mainly, to promote personal change. Readers are shopping for enhanced abilities and a freshened outlook. The writers that serve them are change-agents, coaches, counselors, teachers, and advisers.

Their assistance occurs through the written word, but to say they are primarily "writers" is to mistake their medium for the message. Farmers aren't truckers or railroad people. They create food and nutrition, sustaining lives. Farmers only employ wheels and rails as vehicles in which to deliver their true value.

Asking the question posed by management guru Peter F. Drucker is of great help in distinguishing what we actually do from what we think we are doing. He urged us to ask:

"What business am I really in?"

The answer isn't always obvious, and if it comes too quickly, it is often wrong. Railroads, according to Drucker, were eclipsed by airfreight and trucking because they failed to define their mission more broadly, as being in the transportation business, with or without rails.

You might even say, in substantial part, that writers are in the business of creating audiences for their work products. Defined this way, they would invest significant time in marketing activities, more time than most do, today. Novelists would be interested, as marketers, in developing books that could be easily or beautifully transposed into feature films, resulting in expanded audiences, and profits.

Even "technical writers" aren't writing for a living, though this activity is in their job title. They explain, inform, instruct, and above all, when successful, promote clear and quick understanding.

Arguably, they're in the translation business, making the complex, simple and comprehensible. In this sense, they're in the "genius" business, too.

(It takes a certain genius to make the complicated, simple, right?)

So, how do we become better writers? I think it is by pursuing our main objective.

Entertain. Promote personal change and improvement. Inform, instruct, and translate the difficult into the easy.

Your skills will improve, and before you know it, you'll become a writer.

But please don't mistake that with what you really do or with the contributions you are making!