An author’s/writer’s life is often fraught with an overwhelming compulsion to write, despite doubts, blank-screen moments, time constraints, sub-par paychecks, and the endless wish to meet editors’ demands or readers’ expectations.
If these truisms are truly true, why keep at it?
Writing is one of those artful professions that welcomes talented folks who heed a calling and newbies who’ve only composed one page but have a great desire to master the necessary skills. Thankfully, writing improves with repetition. Writers learn early on that tackling the structure of a single sentence a dozen times will enhance its power. This holds true for paragraphs, chapters, stories, and novels.
Good things await those who diligently work to improve.
And affirmations help pave this speckled pathway. If it happens early in your journey, it’s a confidence booster. When I was a reporter on my high school news staff, The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Kentucky, honored me with a feature writing award. This distinction confirmed my decision to major in journalism and English in college and set me on a writing trek I’m still pursuing.
It is exciting to imagine a career in writing. Now, picture countless ways to achieve this.
As my pathway evolved, I worked in hospital public relations, reported for newspapers, taught high school English and college composition, and today, write fantasy fiction. If I’d ever given up, thrown in the towel, pitched a fit over earning less money than I deserved, or decided hard work and diligence were beneath me, I’d have failed.
Hard lessons await anyone who begins writing and assumes she has nothing more to learn.
Whether you’ve been at this for a handful of years or three-plus decades, you’ve joined a profession that requires continuous polishing, tons of reading, boundless research, and the never-ending pursuit of learning. A writer’s/author’s responsibility is to create a product that others will enjoy reading.
That’s a tall order. Though there’s no stop sign at reading.
Now, a journalist may choose to extend the life of an article or series by presenting a live Q&A on social media, taking part in a podcast series, creating a short documentary to offer visual interpretations, and, yes, writing a book.
An author may write for fiction podcasts, create novels, chapter-by-chapter, on a fiction app, use AI (with caution) for research, write a course, ghostwrite for a client, and on and on, including choosing an independent publisher, over a traditional one, to get those novels out to readers.
Despite the choices and challenges a writer faces, I’m certain we can agree on one thing: a writer/author writes for reasons that make no sense to anyone else. Why keep at it?
Because the sheer art of writing is akin to breathing.
