>I suspect that if many writers took seriously writing a book as a real project, rather than an aspirational cultural ideal of ‘being an author’ along the lines

>I suspect that if many writers took seriously writing a book as a real project, rather than an aspirational cultural ideal of ‘being an author’ along the lines of ‘being a foreign language speaker’ or ‘being a PhD’, they would realize that it is a serious risk which can backfire. Ha, I feel called out. I'm in the latter camp, I was always terrible at languages as a kid and it was part of the reason I decided to move to Finland and learn Finnish as an adult. 1000+ hours in and I"m still nowhere close to my goals. I wouldn't recommend it for most halfway sane cost-benefit analyses - my ballpark number is I've forgone some $200,000 and counting in opportunity cost. (I still feel like I'm coming out on net is because it also allowed me to marry the world's greatest woman, and to heal a bunch of deep psychological issues. Assuming you don't have those, stay far away!)