Apple seeds are small and insignificant. They’re tiny specks of black that you carve out of an apple and throw away. They’re detritus tossed on the ground. But give it rich soil to take root in …
The apple tree comes from the small and insignificant seed. It is tall and strong. It’s branches are broad and its leaves green. It bears good fruit. Just give it time. Be patient. Nurture it. Graft in healthy branches. Care for it and watch it produce an abundance. Time invested is time rewarded.
So it is with dreams. Nurture your dreams, give them care, treat them patiently. They won’t emerge fully formed in a day. Months and years and decades. These are the lifespans of realized dreams. Work. Wait. Watch. They will grow. They will bear fruit.
Many thanks for visiting my blog. I post updates on my writing career, I muse over storytelling and fiction, and I reflect on the curious and wonderful things in life.
Feeling down in the dumps? Feeling like nothing you do is right or ever will be? If not, don’t worry, you will.
I’ve detected a pattern to discouragement in my life. It likes to come at certain times. I wonder if that’s true for everyone.
I find that nighttime is the worst for me. A couple of hours before bedtime, when I start to tire and my mind starts shutting down, fear and worry slither into my brain.
I need to start thinking about this. I haven’t done that yet. Do I have enough time to complete my book? Do I have enough money to pay for editing and publishing and marketing? Is it even any good?
It’s inevitable. For the writer, it can be debilitating. We work hard to finish our projects. We march on with stubborn determination to see our dreams through to the end. And we dread … not failure exactly. Inadequacy. Anyone can write, but can we write well? Or is it all just crap that would be better off hidden away in our computer’s hard drive, or better yet, in our own minds?
Even worse, what if it’s a good story, but nobody knows it exists? The unnoticed, inconsequential curiosity of the online store.
The night is a quiet and still time. My brain has time to process all these fears. When the excitement of the actual writing process stops, these nagging thoughts are heard most clearly.
But we don’t have to listen to such fears. They come, they stay a while, and then they leave. Yes, they do leave, if we press on regardless. Discouragement isn’t something we always have control over, but we can control how we act in response to it. Feelings of worry are not eternal. They only have real power to influence our life and work if we give them permission. Emotions run up and down. I look at my work today and feel it’s my best yet, and look at it tomorrow and cringe in disgust.
To continue writing in spite of that hollow feeling, to trudge along, to persevere through grim thoughts, this is is what we must do. Night isn’t forever.
Fear debilitates. Depression paralyzes. Writing is a joy for me, but I don’t feel excited about it all the time. Not 24/7. I have rough spots. I have times where I wonder if I should just leave it all behind. And I wait. I don’t act on those impulses of giving up, because I realize that they don’t last.
Writing is a marathon. Like athletes, we tire. We can feel inadequate and unable to rise up to the challenge. Write anyway. If you feel like crap, write. If you feel like nothing is coming to you, write something. A paragraph, a single sentence, anything so that you can say that you wrote for the day. Persevere. Be stubborn.
After night comes morning.
If you just so happen to be enjoying my blog, feel free to subscribe. I post updates on my writing career, I muse over storytelling and fiction, and I reflect on the curious and wonderful things in life.
My first book, A God Walks up to the Bar, is available on Amazon.com. Witness the modern day adventures of the Greek god Hermes in a world much like our own – and with demigods, vampires, nymphs, ogres, and magic. The myths never went away, they just learned to move on with the times. It’s a tough job, being a god!
We’ve all heard the glorious stories of the writer who dashed out a masterpiece over the course of a weekend, solicited it, and made big bucks. Or we hear about someone writing a book for kicks, posting in on Amazon, and suddenly getting offers from film studios to turn their sudden runaway success into a show. It’s a tempting motivation to become an author, or scriptwriter, or whatever. These guys made it. How hard can it be?
Pretty hard, actually. After all, we only hear about the successes. What about those stories written over a weekend that never took off? How many books on Amazon do you think there are that nobody’s ever read?
I don’t know where I first heard the story that the screenplay for Good Will Hunting was written by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck over a weekend. Probably one of those motivational stories my teachers told me as an example of how life doesn’t actually work. It’s not true, by the by. Matt Damon wrote the original 40-page script as a drama class project, then worked with Affleck on revising it into a full Hollywood script. So, no, they didn’t conjure a masterpiece out of thin air in just a couple days. The foundation was already there, and they still had to work hard to translate it from written word to big screen.
Hugh Howey wrote Wool as a one-off short story that he put up for sale on Amazon. And yes, it did become so successful that he ended up writing sequels and selling the film rights and getting a good deal out of the whole thing. But as unusual as the success of Wool is, it was still based on years of writing experience and hard work. Howey had already been a diligent writer long before he published Wool. The story may have been a one-off, but Howey’s efforts weren’t. He goes into detail at length about his writing on his own blog.
All of which is to say, if you hear about a runaway success, that success is probably the result of a lot of hard work, blood, sweat, and tears that rarely make their way into the story told in magazines. The humdrum routine of writing, or scripting, or painting, or sculpting, or whatever medium you can think of doesn’t usually make for a good story, after all. Customers want the end product. The tedious hours of chipping away at marble or revising a fourth draft aren’t what they’re buying. And, quite frankly, do they even need to know about all that sweat and work?
If you’re truly devoted to something, you’ll put in the effort necessary to see it through to completion. Writing isn’t a “get rich quick” scheme. In fact, it may be the worst method possible for getting rich quickly. Sure, there are plenty of authors out there who make a living off their books. Many of them are quite wealthy, even. But only because they work to an almost obsessive degree on their projects. They devote extreme amounts of time to writing to the near-exclusion of all else. That’s not the easy path to wealth.
So, no, there aren’t any “easy masterpieces” in the world. Just a lot of grunt work and diligence that is never seen by the public eye.
Do what you love, not what you think will make you rich. That’s one thing that can make life a bit easier.
The gods and beings of ancient myth never went away. They just moved on with the times.
My book, A God Walks up to the Bar, is currently available on Amazon.com. Venture into the world of the Greek god Hermes, a world filled with demigods, vampires, nymphs, ogres, magic, and trickery. It’s a tough job, being a god!
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Jake W. Powell 