The path is long and difficult – will you journey anyway?
Since I was a little girl, I’ve known I’ve wanted to tell stories. Once, I didn’t know I could make a living from this; the word author wasn’t known to me. But when I learned that word, I grasped on tightly to it and haven’t let go since.
And that’s painful.
Why? Isn’t it lovely to have a dream and know what you want so young? Yes and no. It hurts to have a dream that seems so far away. Even as you step closer, it’s still covered in mist and sitting atop a mountain that you can’t find the path to climb. Because the road is long and difficult to get there. And even when I get there, there’s no telling what I will find and what my success may look like.
That’s why lately I’ve been doing something very scary. I’ve been thinking about what I’d want to do and what my life would look like if I never became a successful author. Not because I’m quitting. Hell no. But because the desperation and pressure that comes with grasping on so tightly to my dream is making the chase a lot harder to bear. Every story becomes a “book” and that’s this heavy pressure that myself and my friend talk about on our podcast, Don’t Quit Your Daydream.
How is my creativity meant to flow freely if it constantly feels suffocated and stressed? In one episode, we likened our creativity to a person and we’ve been strangling it lately because we just want it to produce something extraordinary for us so we can save ourselves from our current lives and live out our dreams of being successful authors.
It’s toxic. It’s not what I want anymore.
And don’t get me wrong, I’m not seeking huge success. I would love to just switch my normal income that I have now (which I’m very grateful for but isn’t anything to shout and brag about) from my normal job to the same income from being an author. That’s what I’m seeking. I’d still struggle for money sometimes but at least I could afford what I needed and go away on holiday and give gifts and be doing all that more freely while being my ideal author self.
Freedom, self-actualisation, a dream come true even in a small way.
But the road is long and difficult. No matter who you are, at some point, it will be difficult. Either you struggle to get the first draft out, or you struggle to edit it to what you want the story to be, or you struggle to land an agent through querying, or struggle to sell to a publisher through submissions, or the book struggles to find a place on the shelf where it actually sells well. The process is long and tedious and it’s a lot of waiting and ifs and buts and maybes. I don’t say this to put anyone off writing books as a career, and I won’t quit either.
I may need to change my strategy, though.
I can’t be unhappy until I’m an author. That could mean putting my life on hold and being miserable for decades. It could mean I never truly live at all. I’m not saying my dream won’t happen, but that I don’t know how long it will take until it does and there’s so many variables out of my control.
My biggest issue at the moment is writing a story that I actually want to edit and make better, whether for publishing or whatever else. I’ve written complete first drafts, appropriately sized too, but when they’re done I feel a bit meh. Like the story doesn’t feel as good as I wanted it to in order for me to want to revise and perfect it. It’s a weird and frustrating problem to have because it’s nuanced. How do I know if I’m self-sabotaging, or if the story could be revised and I end up liking it, or if I’m wasting my time altogether, or if it’s not right and it’s time to move on?
Anyway, what I’m saying is I need to look at ways to be happy and thriving in other ways. I don’t want my life to feel like waiting for writing success. I want to write happily and freely because I’m happy with my life in general. I want to write as a bonus. I want to write because an idea is gripping me not because I’m forcing it in a need for success and change.
What does this look like? I don’t know yet. I have a few ideas of what I can do to that would fulfil me and bring me better life balance. Sadly, it will mean trial and error to see what works. I don’t know what will make me happy until I try it. What does make me worry, though, is that I’m 29 this year and time feels like it’s ticking. It’s a worry that I may need to study or be a beginner again for something new until I find my feet. And I worry about even more wasted time.
Of course, a concern is that it may look and feel like I’m giving up on my dream. That if I put effort into something else, then my writing dream falls to the wayside. But the ultimate goal is to build a life that feels good so I feel good enough to write and create. Finding that place, that job, that lifestyle that suits this goal isn’t easy but I think it’s important.
Thank you for reading this ramble! It’s hard but I have to shift at this age and stage in my life. Being a successful published author is a long and difficult road and I am just finding a way to support and equip myself to better handle it. If you are in a similar position, know you’re not alone or a failure. We all have journeys that look differently and it’s about finding what makes dealing with it easier.
Good luck to us all!
Sincerely,
S. xx
