What do you want to be when you grow up?

The Guardian yesterday discussed a YouGov poll in which it turns out 10% of us want to be writers, more even than those who want to be sports personalities, pilots or astronauts! Those over 50 are most prone to this desire - the younger lot are keener on being a Beckham or Lewis Hamilton. This just demonstrates the halo of glamour that adheres to the concept of the writing life - along with the notion that there's gold in them thar hills.

This led me to think about the numerous courses, handbooks and articles all of which have at their core that enticing message, that lure - 'You too can be a writer!' 'Why not be a writer!'

I myself contribute to this, in that I have my own small involvement in creative writing teaching. Often the people I teach have a burning urge to do it, often they've proven their motivation by writing stories and novels, by entering competitions, by, quite simply, sticking to it. However, there are also people who claim they want to be writers in the same way that lanky sixteen year old girls want to be models - they do it by steadfastly ignoring what is actually involved.

So, what does it take to be a writer? First of all, bloody hard graft. Forget airy visions of the sensitive author at the desk, chewing the quill pen, furrowing the brow, being struck by the white heat of inspiration, scribbling furiously through the night, writing his or her way into immortality. This is not to say that inspiration can't work like that: it can, and when it does it's a wonderful trip. The point is, it doesn't work like that all the time. The Muse, as Stephen King says, is a basement kind of guy, not an ethereal spirit wafting down from Mount Parnassus. You need to beat your Muse with a stick. You need to get it out of bed - and it's usually as reluctant to do so as my teenage son. And that's Reluctant.

Not only is it hard graft but prolonged hard graft. You have to commit yourself to the long haul, to the ups and downs, to the supercharged enthusiasm followed by the long dark night of the soul, to the wrenching of precious time out of the daily confusion of thoughts and activities, and most of all to the lack of understanding, open hostility, or cold rejection you face. When I was young there was an advert for toys called Weebles and the jingle went 'Weebles wobble but they don't fall down.' You've got to be a Weeble.

You've got to be your own best friend; nurture and comfort yourself with pride in what you've done and faith in what you want to do. You've got to be your own worst enemy, your harshest critic, subjecting everything you write to fierce relentless scrutiny.

You've got to be honest. You've got to let projects go if they're not working out. You've got to focus on your own capacities as a writer, not eat yourself up in envy of others. Honesty may well mean facing up to your limitations. It may mean recognising that wishing isn't doing. Being a writer comes from a germ within, and the nurturing of that germ with industry and practice and the awareness that that's a process which ought never to end. You can always be better.

When I was a little girl and was asked, 'Little girl, what do you want to be when you grow up?', I'd answer primly - and no doubt revoltingly -'An authoress.' It's all I've ever wanted to be. It's always mattered, it still matters, through all the dilatoriness, the self-doubt, the knock-backs. It's what I am and what I always aspire to be. It defines me. I hate it, I'm burdened by it, but I also love it and relish it and wallow in it.

If any of this has made you go 'Ouch', I'm sorry. But then again, I'm not. Just take the time to think about what your writing means to you.