Writing Is Not For Wimps. Do You Have What It Takes?

I won’t mention her by name, but she recently commented on my blog, Artistry With Words, and she said that times were tough right now for her in her writing career. This is a lady I greatly respect. She quit her full-time job to follow her dream of being a full-time writer, and like many of us, she has struggled with that decision. Bills pile up and the paying gigs are few and far between, leaving us clinging to hope and praying that things will get better tomorrow.

Yes, times are tough. I have several friends who have had to return to part-time work to make ends meet, thus pushing the writing dream to the back burner while they pay bills and buy food….and then, dead tired from a full day of work, they sneak off to their writing desk, like a mainline junkie in search of one last high before the day is done.

Is it harder to be a writer today than it once was? I don’t have an answer to that question. I know John Steinbeck worked his craft for seven years before he was finally published in a magazine. Seven years!

No, writing is not for wimps!

Around our household we are always short of money. We have stolen from Peter to pay Paul so many times that we don’t remember what it was like to have discretionary income. We hear rumors that some people in faraway lands take something called a vacation, but we can’t summon memories of what that looks like. We see ads for restaurants featuring prime rib, but nothing in our recent past gives us an adequate understanding about the nature or taste of prime rib.

Life would be infinitely easier for us if I applied for a teaching job and settled into a classroom to make $50,000 next year. We could have a second car and make repairs to our home. We could actually take a vacation and Bev could buy some new clothes. We might even be able to put some money away for emergencies rather than scramble and make do with what we have when times get real hard.

But I have a dream, and Bev shares it. I dream of writing great books and convincing a publisher to market them. I dream of writing incredibly passionate words that inspire people and give them empowerment. I dream of making a difference in this world through my writings.

Will it happen? When will it happen? Am I a fool? Is this a pipe dream that will never see reality?

No, writing is not for wimps!

Well, Bev could work full-time, but we agree that would be hard on her health. I could work full-time or part-time, but that would take me further away from my dream. I could write more content material for meager pennies, but again that takes me away from my goal. Or we can continue to live the way we are living, and I can continue to work my craft and become a better writer, and then hope that lightning strikes and I am one day discovered….against seemingly impossible odds.

There really is no choice. I need to write. This is my passion and we are staking our hopes and really betting our financial future on my ability to mold the perfect sentence.

No, writing is not for wimps!

“If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write something worth reading or do things worth writing.”
Benjamin Franklin

That is my quest as a writer.

“I read and walked for miles at night along the beach, writing bad blank verse and searching endlessly for someone wonderful who would step out of the darkness and change my life. It never crossed my mind that that person could be me.”

Anna Quindlen

I completely understand that quote. One day I woke up and realized that I had the ability to bring dreams to life. Through my words I can alter reality and make the mundane exciting. Through my words I can chastise, embellish, incite and admonish. With the simple act of tapping keys with my fingers I can inspire or rebuke, spread joy or blanket with sorrow.

You do not need me to tell you that times are tough today. The economy is still sputtering, money is tighter and nerves are on edge. Many have given up hope, and day in and day out we see a litany of tragic news on the television or in the newspapers. And yet despite it all, I have to ability to uplift another human being through my writing. I can be that respite so desperately needed by the single mother of four who knows not where the next meal will come from. I can be an oasis of calm in a sea of turbulence for a father of two who just lost his job. I can paint pictures of beautiful lands for the little inner city child who only knows that rats share his apartment and gangs are just extensions of his family.

Quite frankly, I can’t give that up.

So I thank that friend of mine from South Africa who had the courage and honesty necessary to speak her mind and express her frustrations. I understand. I think most of us who are writers, artists and musicians understand. While others labor away at jobs in hopes of finding food for the soul, we writers expose our souls hoping to find food for the table.

Oddly, I find comfort in the fact that Steinbeck and so many others labored for so long before being “discovered.” I’ve only been at this for a little over two years, so in my warped sense of reality I am way ahead of Steinbeck. J Also, I greatly admire the works of Steinbeck, and I figure if he had to work that long to be discovered, then who am I to think it should happen any sooner for me?

I certainly do not have all the answers but I most definitely understand.

Writing is not for wimps!

2013 William D. Holland (aka billybuc)