Imagine for a moment that an executive approached you with a job offer: there will be long hours staring over a computer, countless hours of research and reading, loads of letter-writing, mailing, emailing, editing, revising documents to conform to the recipient’s idiosyncratic wishes, networking with peers, professional development demands, travel, public speaking, conferences, teaching, and, of course, producing work. Successful candidates will be confident, inspiring, innovative, relentless, engaged with the world around them, emotionally and intellectually available, curious, inquisitive, and possess a strong backbone as well as the ability to refute or defend a position at a moment’s notice. By the way, there is little to no compensation for this position.

What nut-job would take said executive up on this offer?

A writer would, of course. Because this is what we do. Each day. Seven days a week. 365 days a year.    

Salon.com recently published an interesting article about the creative class. Once lauded as the innovators of the digital era — the chosen who were to boost us out of the quagmire of economic depression by creating a new knowledge and creative economy — now somehow, this community has receded into the blank abyss, neither hired by companies for their novel ideas nor seemingly appreciated, as federal and state legislatures increasingly kill funding to their organizations and educational institutions. What’s the first thing to be cut from public schools when the budget is tight? You can bet your bottom dollar it will be arts education.

But, perhaps, the business community, Wall Street, Congress, and others, could take a lesson from the creative class, specifically from the writers.

The writers I know (myself included) often work a second (or third!) full-time job as writers, with little to no compensation and often with little to no “reward” as defined in the traditional sense. While often perceived as slacker, hippie, overly dramatic, hyperbolic, dissident, outlying artsy-farts, their work ethic is incredible and unquestionable. And I might add, their work ethic often more than rivals that of their executive counterparts.

However, often to dire consequences, the writer’s return on investment cannot be expressed as numbers or dollars on a spreadsheet (increasingly society’s singular tool for determining worth and value). And so it leaves them (us) to forge ahead, ever diligent, tackling new subject matter, inventing new forms, narrating new dialogues, writing and scraping and writing and scraping, doggedly determined despite all the obstacles in our way that scream at us to quit.

Because it’s that singular moment when someone reads a phrase and is emotionally or intellectually moved — that one moment of epiphany or revelation that changes something in his fabric, that makes him more accepting, more tolerant, more compassionate, more inspired, even more wise. After all, writers possess a value that no figure on a spreadsheet can convey: the ability to imprint joy, anguish, terror, contentment, ecstasy, pain, and relief upon the human heart.

Ultimately, the members of the creative class are society’s change agents.

History may not remember the JP Morgans and Goldman Sachs of the world five hundred years from now. But it will remember its writers and the works that reflect our culture and express our voices. Five hundred years from now, books — whether in print or digital form — will provide the context for the history we’re currently shaping.

It’s a big responsibility — a tremendous, difficult, brain-bending job with little reward — but one that’s vital to a society’s bottom line.

So when said executive asks you to analyze risk and reward, profit and loss…Writer, you’re ready.