Hard Work is Good Work

In my ongoing spirit of honesty I am going to share something with you all.

I know nothing about being a writer. I have no official training or qualifications, other than high school. I never have time to read more than a handful of pages a week and know very little about other Indie authors. And until recently I had very little understanding about how  novel is made. How the editing process shapes and re-moulds it over numerous stages.

Now this is nothing but my own ignorance and is not meant to be an excuse or even an apology, for I do my best. Or at least what I thought of as being my best at the time.

I get an idea, it brews in my head and I have to write it down. That is how writing started for me. Although I have written stories ever since I was a child. Eventually I had an idea that turned itself into a novel. I was only 16 and when I look at it now I cringe, but still it was 70,000 words and made sense in a childish sort of way.

I didn't edit it at all, but then I never really had aspirations of publishing it.

I will admit, that on regular occasions, I sit behind my computer, or lie awake in bed at night thinking about how long it has taken me to get to where I am with my novel, and how much still needs to be done, and I feel lost. I feel exhausted and ask myself how much time have I invested in this when I could have been doing something else.

But then I always hear a saying my grandfather told me when I was a teenager.

There are two types of people in the world. Those who do something because they are supposed to, and those who do it because they love it. That is the difference between a champion and the rest.

His analogy was that of a runner. He said if you look outside on a wet and windy day and see someone out for a run, you know that they are doing it because they love it, because they have that champion mentality, and not just because the doctor told them to run because it is good for them.

I repeat this to myself and every time it works, because I am not writing just because it relaxes me, but because I love it, because I have the champion mentality and will achieve everything I set out to do. I will sit in the rain and write, nothing will stop me.

That is what separates us, from the rest of those writers out there. We know that there is a lot of hard work ahead, but we refuse to back down or shy away.