What are the benefits of spending time writing novels? Is it a useful activity?

Is creating art (paintings, sculpture, writing and/or performing music, writing and/or performing in plays or movies) useful?

It’s possible you will make money from doing any of those things or from writing novels. It’s also possible that you won’t make money or enough for it to be anything but a hobby that may help pay for itself.

People buy books. A lot of books. That alone indicates that many enjoy reading, just as many enjoy going to movies, sporting events, concerts, and monster truck events. Do making movies, taking part in sports, performing music or doing whatever it is at monster truck rallies qualify as “useful activities”?

Is providing entertainment a useful activity? I’m sure you can answer that question yourself.

Providing entertainment may be a paying activity or not. People take part in little local theater productions or amateur art or sporting activities without making money because they enjoy doing it and still they entertain others.

I can’t think of a single author I know who doesn’t love writing for its own sake. Telling a story, putting words together to create an image or feeling that may stay with readers for years, give them an insight into themselves or change the way they think of life and the world: those things make our hearts beat. Just doing it, whether or not anyone reads it, is fulfilling.