Ragging on one's profession

It's inevitable, isn't it? Get a few workmates together and what do we do...rag, rag, rag. I attended a party on the weekend — a truly wonderful party in which I met more writers, published, unpublished, and just about published, than I have ever met before. But what did we end up doing? Complaining about the pay, the politics, the seemingly contradictory demands of sales and marketing and our art. Yet with two chapters left in my latest novel, I cannot stop. I trust neither will the others. Writers by definition write. There is no other recourse.