One does not simply write, and when one does, it is with a spine, a conviction, a purpose that transcends the mere hack. Write that which promises greatness, that inspires hope, that will make a reader run back into a burning home to save, write an experience that a torrent of flood water could not pry from your readers drowning fingers.
In your work you can find a small income and little else reward. You can find hopeless nights, and blank pages full of fearful and angst easily filled with fast fingers and little regard for craft or art.
Or you can commit the hardest task, the task of setting in black ink the words that will transcend time and critic reviews. To spend 5000 hours, and yet have the courage to throw it all away, to write the same scene 85 times, and then cut it from the manuscript at the young editors behest. You must create the kind of work that is admired for its shear will of creation as well as its content.
Art or Craft, quantity or quality, neither is all or nothing, and never should you consider anything less. You must find your path in this dark forest, you must carve into the trees your own signposts, so that next time, should you be so utterly mad, that you set out to write another book, that you may learn the lessons you paid so dearly for, and follow the lesser beaten path.
May you live long and write hard.
“Creative writing.” by nikki jansen is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0