Hi all,
Haven’t been on here for a while so bit of a catch up! Am hard at work as usual – subbed a short story to a competition last weekend so fingers crossed on that one. Working mainly on a novella at the moment – it was originally going to be a rather short 20k-ish one but as often happen it’s taken on a life of it’s own and is currently at around 30k with a bit to go yet. I’ve given myself a mini writing challenge until the end of May and then sadly I think June will have to be focused on editing, rewriting a few pieces that were rejected over the last six months and general tidying up. Must admit I much prefer the ‘just writing’ part! 🙂
I have been thinking a lot over the past few weeks about motivation – that elusive thing that trips so many writers up! The thing about writing is that it’s something that so many people want to do, or think they can do. The number of people who will say to you that they’ve always fancied writing a book – with the best will in the world 99% of those people probably won’t get round it. Maybe it would have been a wonderful book, a best-seller, a classic but then if it’s never written we’ll never know.
So, what separates people who want to be writers from those who actually become them? And going further afield as I have fingers in other pies – those who want to be photographers, film makers, songwriters, music producers, directors etc. I know talent obviously plays a part but I think so much more important is putting the work into it. If you see something as a hobby, or a way to relax then that’s great, but it’s probably all it’s going to be for you. If you want something to be your career then you need to treat it as such.
So if you maybe don’t feel very ‘inspired’ today then instead of taking that as a sign not to do anything you try and force a bit anyway – maybe you won’t get as much down as on a good day but very little helps. You wouldn’t call in sick to your ‘regular’ job if you didn’t feel creative enough 🙂 It may mean coming in from your current 9-5 or after a long day with the kids and just wanting to chill in front of the tv, but instead booting up the laptop and getting on with the WIP. It may mean ignoring people who look at you like you’re crazy when they ask what you did last night and you reply ‘worked on a novel for 4 hours’.
Of course, none of it’s easy, sometimes it can be impossible to physically fit things in around other commitments and I’m the first to say I have blips 🙂 but isn’t there a saying that ‘nothing worth having comes easy’ – think on the end result and whether it’s worth putting the work in for. I know for me, if it’s a question of getting to live my dream career then yes it must be 🙂
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