Good advice ...

... Vocational Counseling. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

There's much of interest here. For instance: "We have yet to shake off the Romantic notion of writing as a calling, an indulgence in lyrical subjectivity having nothing to do with 'vocational skills' and the interests of 'the marketplace.' "

There's also this: "... the realization that a poet is a person who writes poetry has shaken him mightily. Of course, this hasn’t stopped Billy Collins ..." Ouch.

On a personal note, a few days before Prince Charles and the former Camilla Parker-Bowles were married, my editor at the time, Jeff Weinstein, suggested I write a poem on the subject. Hack that I am, I delivered one the next day and it appeared the day after that in the paper. Here, for your delectation, it is (along with the prefatory explanation that Jeff penned):

Perhaps the most important task of a British poet laureate is to celebrate royal weddings with an epithalamium, a poem in honor of the bride and groom to be.
Of course, this particular nuptial has been downscaled, postponed - and the Prince has been asked by the Church of England to apologize to his beloved’s former husband.
But poet laureate Andrew Motion has put off his task for other reasons. He was extremely fond of the previous royal bride, and it’s been reported that he’s having trouble coming up with adequate rhymes for "Camilla. "
So, in his place, our resident laureate offers the couple his poetic gift (having tried and rejected "vanilla," "chinchilla," "sarsaparilla" and, in an American vein, "bridezilla").

Royal Couplets

Of marriage, matron, prince, and bard I sing,
And of delays the fates seem bent to fling
Into the way of true love’s unsmooth course.
Who wouldn’t swap his kingdom for a horse
When called upon to first acknowledge sin
To gain the church’s pardon, just to win
A Town Hall wedding scheduled on the day
That Papal obsequies get in the way?
And now, the charge to praise love’s true devotion
Has England’s Laureate in a commotion.
The scribe dear late Diana’s charms inspired
Has found his rhyming muse is sick, and tired.
What’s to be done, but take our pen in hand,
Declaring even messy love is grand?
All vain and pompous circumstance aside
It’s just another hopeful groom and bride.
Therefore we wish poor Charles and his Camilla
Full wedded bliss, down to the last scintilla.