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 these individuals are dreaming of wealth and fame, not the long hour 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. For every writer kissed by fortune there are thousands more whose longing is never rewarded. When I left a 20-year career in the U.S. Coast Guard to become a freelance(自由栏目)writer, I had no prospects at all. What I did have was a friend who found me my room in a New York apartment building. It didn’t even matter that it was cold and had no bathroom. I immediately bought a used manual typewriter and felt like a genuine writer. After a year or so, however, I still hadn’t gotten a break and began to doubt myself. It was so hard to sell a story that I barely made enough to eat. But I knew I wanted to write, I had dreamed about it for years. I wasn’t going to be one of those people who die wondering: What if ?  I would keep putting my dream to the test even though it meant living with uncertainty and fear of failure. This is the shadowland of hope, and anyone with a dream must learn to live there.