An article in the Education Guardian Weekly references a study conducted by Professor James C Kaufman of California State University at San Bernardino. His findings: poets die young. He says:
The image of the writer as a doomed and sometimes tragic figure, bound to die young, can be backed up by research. Writers die young. This research finding has been consistently replicated in a variety of studies.
Isn’t that just fabulous news? Here I thought working from home and having less stress (well, sort of) would decrease my death risk. Unless a bookshelf falls on my head, I should live longer as a writer than I would have as a lawyer. Right? Well, not necessarily.
To the extent there’s good news for novelists here, it’s in the heirarchy of potential survival. According to the article, nonfiction writers live longer than fiction writers, who live longer than playwrights, who live longer than poets. Basically, it sucks to be a poet. And unless you’re Maya Angelou – and you’re not – you’re probably eating dirt out of the backyard to survive, so the poet thing is a tough gig no matter what. [That last part about the dirt was not in the study. That's just my sense of the situation.]
This all points to one thing: if you’re going to write and want to live, try writing nonfiction.
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