First, come to the paper everyday. I mean you have to write in order to be a writer. You have to accept that a great deal of what comes out is crap. It could be on a day where you think you have your best words and don’t. It could be on a day where your heart isn’t in it. You gotta write constantly. It is like training for an event and it is like acclimating to cold water. You gotta be in it to be in it.
Next, the writing is work and the work is and must continue to be its own reward. The process itself seems boring and often grueling. It is. I used to love the process as a kid. There are still moments where I love the process, but for the most part I’ve fallen out of love with the process and I’m trying to fall back in love again. Not an easy task to accomplish.
Read. You must see good writing to be a good writer. You have to know what it looks like in order for it to take shape in your head and become something uniquely your own.
Explore and imagine. I think that this is the part that got me where I am today. Both in a good and bad way. I used to publish something called the Idea Archive. I would develop characters and plots and post them freely to the world. It was an everyday thing for me–ten minute rule writ large. I stopped and when I did a certain amount of my passion for the art withered.
Payment can happen but it isn’t why you write. I forgot that. I turned the art into the grind and I didn’t want to grind. I used to say that I burned myself out as a writer, but the truth is more likely that I got paid and decided that this was suddenly about the money and the cost benefit of how much time I was spending on the work.
These are just a few of the basics that I know I need to work on. Hopefully my journey and my stresses can be helpful to another writer out there trying to see their way through to staying the course.