Why Not to Write:
Your favorite TV show is on.
You have to cook dinner.
You're working overtime this week/month/year.
You can't think of anything.
You have no ideas.
You're stuck on this one scene that you can't get right.
Your chances of finding an agent are approximately 1,000 to 1.
Your chances of getting published are probably worse than 10,000 to 1.
Your chances of being even moderately successful if you ever get published are about 100,000 to 1.
Your chances of ever being able to quit your day job to write are a million to 1 or worse.
In all likelihood, no one but a few friends and family will ever read the stories you labor over for hours and weeks and months and years.
If anyone does read them, many people probably won't like them.
If you ever land a review by anyone vaguely known, it will probably be a bad review.
You'll spend the rest of your life angsting over your writing - even if you do succeed, there will always be something you can't get: better awards, better sales, better blurbs.
Why to Keep Writing:
Because you can't imagine ever quitting.
Or, in a fit of pique, you did quit writing when you didn't "make it" by the time you were 25. That lasted a few months, before you were sneaking into a dark corner and rationalizing, "Jotting down some ideas isn't really writing." And before you knew it, you were back into a full-blown writing habit.
ReplyDeleteAin't a power in the verse that can keep a writer from writing.
Malcolm Reynolds approves of this statement >.>
ReplyDelete