Here's Hoping

So I was in my "Reading Major Texts" class, and discovered that basically the entirety of our study will be focused on Walt Whitman. A great American, they say. Hey laid the foundations for American poetry, the father of our nation's verse. 

These things I don't doubt. 

It did, however, depress me terribly. This man, this great man whom entire classes are devoted to, died very poor and felt himself to be a literary failure. What fate, then, awaits me, the poor aspiring writer? One of the main (admittedly selfish) reasons I want to be a writer is to leave some kind of impact behind me, but is it worth the predicted life of a starving artist? 

I quickly decided the best thing to do was to work towards becoming the next Danielle Steel. I mean come on, we can't all be Steven Kings after all. 

Some times I think about supporting myself on Ghostwriting and the like. I thought more and more about different ways to support myself, and eventually my wandering train of literary thought drifted across the prairies and plains of ambition, and eventually made a stop at the station of Criminal Dramas. 

Forgive me for the awful metaphor. 

What I'm trying to say is that I thought about what it would be like to write for "CSI" or "Law & Order" or the like. I thought about how much it would suck, sitting in a room with other writers, trying to come up with the most terrible people doing the most terrible things to other people. Imagine sitting around and thinking up murders and rapes and all kinds of terrible things and then writing it all down for prime time television. 

If I had that job, I would definitely need a puppy.