On Persistence, And The Long Con of Being a Successful Writer

[A. E. Lowan]

This a guest post by author Kameron Hurley on Chuck Wendig's blog. I'll let it speak for itself.

There is a little rough language, but not as much as Chuck's usual fare.

On Persistence, And The Long Con Of Being A Successful Writer « terribleminds: chuck wendig

 

[Philip Overby]

That was a good read and very true.

Some thoughts:

We all experience bumps in the road that each of us measure as success. When I was about 15 I had an argument with my mother about wanting to be a writer. She, being realistic, said I still needed to work a regular job. I told her, "I'll show you! I'll make all my money from writing!" Fast forward and I'm 33 with only about 100 dollars credited toward various writing ventures, mostly freelance articles about chairs and exhaust systems. However, I've never veered from this idea that I want to be a writer. I've had moments where I think I suck, or this is taking too long, or this is hard, or maybe I should spend more time doing other stuff, or I'm not spending enough time writing, etc. etc. But I always come back to writing. I just love it. I don't see myself doing anything else the rest of my life. It's not even about getting readers and being famous or even making money from it. That would be awesome of course. However, I just like creating things. Always have. Whether it's G.I. Joes navigating on my couch, spending most of my high school years playing Dungeons and Dragons, drawing up sketches of characters in the stock room at work when I should have been organizing shoes, or writing in my tiny notebooks on the trains in Japan, I love it.

And my persistence will never wear off. I may annoy people with my over-enthusiasm towards writing, but it's something ingrained in me. And that makes me happy.

 

[Chilari]

Something of a wakeup call, I think. Ever since I was 16, I've always been certain that this story will be a success, give it a year, maybe two I'll have something published, and then another year or two later the rest of the trilogy and I'll be famous and successful and it'll all be good.

Today I found an old document in my work laptop "personal" folder. Dated June 2012, it's a spreadsheet setting out my writing schedule in terms of when I would write a novel, novella, short story etc, when it would be published, how much money I might hope to see coming in from it based on modest sales figure estimates. According to that spreadsheet, I should by now be earning £50 a month from writing - see, modest? No such luck. I haven't even written 30,000 words in the time that has passed since then, much less the estimated 200,000 words.

Persistence. I used to think I'd done that part, and now it was time for it to pay off. But I can't even persist long enough to finish the book. I'm hoping my latest plan, my latest (almost) daily regime will help me with that part. I guess I'm still learning what persistence is. But maybe it's time to stick the word to my monitor too. I've got a story to write, and I've barely started.

Thanks for the link.