But You Keep Writing Anyway

There comes a time when you realize you’ll never take the writing world by storm. Like your heroes. You aren’t a prodigy.

But you keep writing anyway..

You won’t sell your first story to your favorite magazine. You won’t sell all your stories. (A few folks do!)

But you keep writing anyway.

There comes a time when you realize that your day job goes on… well. Maybe forever. You may realize this before or after you start selling things. Before or after your first story or novella or novel is published. Before or afterr you first award nomination. Before or after your Kirkus reviews. Before or after your Hugo or Nebula award.

But you keep writing anyway.

There comes a time when you realize you will never be a fresh face. Your author photo for your first book, if it ever gets published, is gonna be this worn around the edges middle-aged person. Nobody will ever look at you and want to be you. Not if they have to look like you, be as old as you. Your face will not sell a single book. Your books will have to sell themselves.

But you keep writing anyway.

You eventually realize that your books will not do for you what books written by others do. You are performing magic tricks, that work best for others. You can amuse yourself, but you cannot tickle yourself. You can surprise yourself, but after that moment of surprise, there’s a ton of mechanical toil.

But you keep writing anyway.

There comes a time when it gets harder to read; when things you read and loved no longer work for you, when you grow jealous of authors of things you cannot imagine ever writing, when you grow weary of reading things you feel you could have written yourself. Or written better.

But you keep writing anyway.

There comes a time when it all gets to be too much; the ambivalence of friends, family, workshop, market, editors, awards process, agents, publishers, one star reviewers. The pile of unsold work so much taller than the pile of stuff sold. The mental calculation of how much per hour writing has made you. If anything, after you factor in the courses and retreats and professional memberships and research expenses.

And you stop writing. For a time. You have better, or more necessary, things to do.

And those other things consume you, and then, recede, and the disappointments fade, and the memory of the accomplishments glows, and the friendships shine brighter than the ambivalence and tribal bickering. You remember this hidden world inside, infinite, largely untapped, your own godlike ability to imagine into being that which would require billion dollar budgets to render on film.

Nobody needs to green light you—except you.

You get the exact same blank page to write on that every single writer you ever loved was given. Your materials are just as good.

Language. Introspection. Focus. Effort. Will. Reason. Unique experience.

You have time. Some time. Some have more time than others. That isn’t fair. That doesn’t have to stop you cold. You have some time. And you can do this. Because you have before, And you are still you, a version of you, and will always be some version of you.

And you find yourself writing again, for no reason, for fun, with no expectations, with great expectations, and when you write, you’re a writer. You get to be one. You are one.

For as long as you want to be. For as long as you can.