Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Tip o' the Week

I've been re-reading Emerson, cats & kittens, and this quote of his caught my attention over the weekend: "The way to write is to throw your body at the mark when your arrows are spent."

Writing is work, folks. More than that, writing is hard work, it's getting up early and staying up late, it's sacrificing doing other fun things to put another few hundred or thousand words to paper, it's spending money on printer ink and postage and conference fees when you'd rather spend it on mega sweet vacations, it's applying for fellowships and retreats when you'd rather be watching reality TV, it's spending time on your on-line platform or reviewing proofs or perfecting your backlist of e-titles on Amazon instead of hanging out with friends.

Writing requires commitment and discipline even more than it requires talent. The hungrier writer will outperform the more talented writer nine times out of ten. If you don't want to be a writer more than you want any other professional goal, odds are you aren't going to make it very far.

This isn't to say that writers don't have families or personal lives or other hobbies and interests; they have all these things. They simply want to be professional writers badly enough to put in the requisite time and effort to improve their craft and make the necessary connections. If you want to be a writer, you'd better be willing to put in all the work and jump through all the crazy hoops. If you want to be a writer, you have to be good enough and smart enough and dedicated enough. And you've got to be lucky as hell.

Nothing worth doing or learning comes easily, dear readers, but if that were the case, you wouldn't get any satisfaction from doing or learning those things. Keep working, keep reading, and keep writing, and your efforts are bound to pay off in some respect sooner or later.

Tomorrow: a lesson on special markets!

10 comments:

  1. I wrote this Noon on Tuesday and read your post at 11:30pm the same day. Since you were walking inside my head, I wanted to share.

    Ramblings,Tuesday "... It has been a labor of love in a way I never would have expected. To love what we do every single day, without promise of payment, without the guarantee of recognition or vindication, is a wonderful way to spend a lifetime.

    If I don't write everyday I feel as though I've cheated myself, my readership and my dream agent and publisher. Each day I put myself here and don't move until I have done a good day's work. That is what is so wonderful about being given this amazing opportunity. Don't blow it by wasting time with lunch, chatter, meetings and cyber-crap. I want to use the time to be who I was always meant to be, while I was busy doing other things and waiting for another shot.

    Afterall, how many shots does one person need?"

    Thanks, Eric :)

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  2. Patton Oswalt has a bit about how he's glad that comedy had a rough culling in the nineties because it chased out all the hobbyists and dabblers.
    I'd like to think that all the rigors of publishing today will have much the same effect.
    So many people scream about the ship sinking. Some head for the shore, others decide to grow some gills.

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  3. Thanks for lighting a fire under me as I sit here in the pre-dawn hours, not sipping coffee fast enough. Off to my novel, now!

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  4. I do all the above. I'm not hungry, I'm starving. My only problem seems to be with the luck.

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  5. Holy crap. I totally needed this post today. (Usually get to writing by 8am, today I mucked around with political blogs covering the SOTU. Gotta stay on point...)

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  6. Yikes - so true that it hurts my eyes to read. I've decided I'm not a writer any more. I'm a...a...a...
    new image to be revealed. No more writing!

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  7. If you want to be a writer, you'd better be willing to put in all the work and jump through all the crazy hoops. If you want to be a writer, you have to be good enough and smart enough and dedicated enough. And you've got to be lucky as hell.

    So true!
    Terry
    Terry's Place
    Romance with a Twist--of Mystery

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  8. Well said! It takes discipline to be a writer. Maybe there are a few cases where someone stumbles into a book deal (though those are the exceptions), but in order to continue that success, hard work is needed. It takes perseverance and familiarity with the industry and, most importantly, sitting down and making yourself write.

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  9. "Nothing worth doing or learning comes easily, dear readers, but if that were the case, you wouldn't get any satisfaction from doing or learning those things"

    This simply caught my attention. Far too many times we are busy complaining how life is so hard. We miss the essence of this statement.

    Lovely tip, Eric.

    -BrownEyed

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