Listen, just you and me now, some real talk about this industry of writing and publishing fiction. This is not about why you should write; it’s about WHY YOU ARE WRITING.
I had an author friend of mine, many years ago say “You have to love it more than showers.” And people teased her for saying that. She didn’t mean it literally, obviously it’s a metaphor.
But it underscores a very, very important truth that I want all of you to grasp and understand and inhabit:
You have to love this if you want to do it on a professional level.
(This is my lived reality, yours may be very different.)
The reality is you do have to love this. You have to make this your life ambition. If you can see yourself doing something else for 40 hours a week or more, then you should probably go do that thing.
Golf or macrame or surfing or sewing or walking dogs or doing comic books or playing fucking role playing games or video games or talking about science or…
The thing that you get up in the morning and say, oh, I get to go do this. That is the thing you should pursue. If that thing isn’t writing, if that thing isn’t publishing, if that thing isn’t going indie or going trad or trying to do a hybrid, then…
Don’t.
I’ve said this in multiple ways on multiple platforms and I’m going to keep banging this drum because fundamentally my goal at FictionMentor isn’t necessarily for you to write the best book you can. (We will talk about that. I will make videos and I will post blogs and I will do all that shit to help you write the best book you can. Absolutely. I want you to do that.)
But I only want you to do it in the context of, is there something else you want to be doing? Because if there is, go fucking do that. I give you permission to go pursue the thing you want.
Because my brothers and sisters, this is the only shot you get. This is your only life. And what I do not want to see is you spending a year or two years or 10 years or 50 years on this fucking 10-book fucking series or whatever. And it never goes anywhere and it just sits on your hard drive. You never try to do anything with it. Or if you do, it just fails completely because your metric for success wasn’t met (which is a completely different topic).
And now what? Like, if that was time you could have spent playing tennis and that’s what really revs your engine, then go play tennis. Go do that.
The thing about “you have to love it more than showers,” again, metaphorically here, is that is the level of commitment that it takes to make this work…based on your metric of success.
That’s the other thing that we need to talk about. What is your metric of success? I’m only just now figuring mine. After decades of doing the work, I’m just now starting to piece it together. What do you actually want from this? Is using finance the best way to gauge whether a project is successful or not? Because maybe it’s not.
Maybe my only metric for this particular project is did I like it? Did I have fun doing it?
Let’s pretend I get an unseemly amount of money for a licensing deal. Cool. You know what I’m gonna do tomorrow?
Write a book.
Because I love it more than showers.
Because that is fundamentally who I am. It is my identity. It’s who I’ve always been. That’s who I’m always gonna be. I’m gonna be a storyteller. I don’t have to worry about whether it sells or not.
I’m not necessarily saying that you have to have that level of commitment or that you’re that in love with the craft, but, man, if you don’t, why are you doing it?
If you don’t love it, if it’s not motivating you, if the love of the craft, if the love of the story isn’t motivating you, then I would have a serious sit-down with yourself and make sure you’re not hiding from some other thing that will be more fulfilling for you.
