I love writing. I have loved writing for most of my life. But when it comes to pursuing publication, love is not enough.
Love can help you to write every day (if that’s how you work). Love can help you to learn more. Love can make the world a happy, rosy place—remember when you were in love the first time, or when you first fell for the person you’re with now? Everything feels happy and skippy and you just know you’ll be together forever because you’ve got the right one (baby. Uh huh.).
You can love writing, and write every day—and if that’s what you want to do, great! If that makes you happy, you are a lucky, lucky person. Go forth, write and be happy (and never, never submit for publication. The rejection would make you sad, and if writing for yourself is enough, don’t taint that.).
But it takes more than love to do the work that’s required to reach publication (and beyond—it soooo doesn’t end there!). As the very-soon-to-be-published Kiersten White puts it:
This is where you switch from having a hobby to being a writer. The mind-numbing, hour-after-hour, please-I-don’t-want-to-do-this-anymore-let’s-just-watch-Arrested-Development-on-DVD-instead, how-on-earth-is-writing-this-much-work stage. Anyone can write a book. Everyone who wants to should. But it’s only when you put in the work (and make the sacrifices, and give up your social life and your sanity and occasionally lower your personal grooming standard) to take something that was fun and make it into something that is good that I think you cross from being a hobbyist to being a writer.
Writing is WORK. The best work, sure, but work nonetheless.
To use our love analogy again, let’s say you get married—and then comes reality. Suddenly, the pure euphoria of being together everysecondofeveryday isn’t there. You have an argument. You yell at each other. You don’t feel that overpowering high in his/her presence.
Suddenly, it takes more than love to keep going. It takes commitment. And it takes work. You keep going because you know the love is there, because you know this person/book is worth it—but love isn’t enough to get you there by itself.
How do you stay committed to your work? How do you cope when your love of writing isn’t enough to keep going?
Inspired in part by The Fantasy of Passion by Travis Robertson; photo by Victoria
Great points on commitment, Jordan. I think you’re right that we often enter into agreements with ourselves or others based on an emotion only to find out that the intensity of that emotion fades. It’s not that the love is gone. It’s just that true love is not simply a feeling. True love is a commitment in spite of feelings because, as we all know, feelings are fickle.
Personally, I’m working on creating an editorial calendar to push myself to publish more often – especially when I don’t “feel” like it. 🙂
I push myself constantly every day. I hate when anything stops me from writing. But life happens. I write through the night and only sleep for about four hours. Jordan, I laughed at your comment about personal grooming standards being lowered. Teehee. Sometimes, when I have a free day, I’m still in my pyjamas late into the afternoon, or into the night. I lose track of time. LOL.
Only yesterday, I heard the post-lady toot the horn. I hurried outside to collect my parcel, which was a book I was waiting on. Still in la-la land from writing, I stood chatting with the post-lady and forgot I was still wearing my nightclothes. When I saw myself in the mirror when I went indoors, I was mortified. I had marmalade stains on my pyjamas. My hair needed washing and was sticking out like a dust mop, and yesterday’s mascara was smudged under my eyes. I looked like Martha out of the play, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? LOL