“You Think Writing is a Dream Job? It’s More Like a Horror Film.”

A YouGov poll that has just been released rates being an author the most desirable job in Britain — with 60% of people saying they’d like to do it for a living. This is a 24% higher than those who want to be a TV presenter and a remarkable 29% higher than those who want to be a movie star.

The mind boggles — or it would if authors didn’t spend a good majority of their time assiduously, and at tedious length, trying to avoid cliches. The fact that people fantasise about being an author only proves how little they know about the reality of the job — or how under-read they are in one of the greatest of that profession, George Orwell.

You think writing is a dream job? It’s more like being trapped in an isolated resort for a long snowy winter while your grasp on reality is slowly peeled back by either alcoholism, insanity, ghosts, or some combination therein, and also maybe it’s about how the moon landing was faked.

You think writing is a dream job? It’s more like finally checking into a motel after a long day of driving and getting stabbed multiple times as a coded way of inferring heterosexual penetration.

You think writing is a dream job? It’s more like a very meta commentary on the clichés inherent in contemporary slasher films while also being a legitimately scary movie featuring some very cool fun strong women who live to see the end of the film but still have to do a bunch of shitty sequels.

You think writing is a dream job? It’s more like being trapped on an Arctic expedition with a ragtag crew of hot bearded men until a cool dog shows up and shapeshifts into this gross alien beast that wants to use your hot, sweaty bodies as hosts and fly in its spaceship to take over the world and so you have to burn everything down and Kurt Russell’s hair is blowing in the wind and I’m sorry were you saying something?

You think writing is a dream job? It’s more like a pseudo-documentary about a bunch of dumb filmmakers who probably get eaten by a witch but you’ll never know because the only footage you get to see is meant to be their shaky handheld perspective and not knowing is precisely what is so disturbing.

You think writing is a dream job? It’s more like spending a tense weekend at your parent’s vacation home with the siblings you hate until a trio of psychotic serial killers in animal masks show up and start murdering you in increasingly gory and surprisingly inventive ways except SURPRISE one guest was raised by a prepper and she totally fucks your shit up and it’s awesome and this song plays and now it’s stuck in your head.