Roy Eugene Singleton Jr.
asked
David Wong:
Hey, David, I noticed anytime you're asked about your work or social life, you describe how busy you are and how often you're working on this that and the other. I was wondering, you describe it as if its terribly exhausting, but is the reward greater than the effort you put in?
David Wong
I'm writing this at 2:20 AM. I'm wrapping up a work day that started at 8:30 AM. In six hours I'll start again.
As for your question, is it worth it? I can't tell. I just know that I have a really narrow window of opportunity to create things while people are still willing to pay for them. I feel like I have a responsibility to create while I'm capable and while people are listening. Audiences don't hang around forever, eventually they'll find something they like better and I'll get too old or my ideas too repetitive. We mock pop stars and pro athletes who go bankrupt two years after the fame ends for not saving money, for not realizing that what they had was temporary. Well I do realize it.
I've been on the other side, I've talked to other writers who never made it, I know how fragile this all is. So yes, I'm going to rewrite every sentence five times. I'm going to work 90 hour weeks. I'm going to get everything I want to say down in writing, in the best possible way I know to say it, knowing that once it's done it's done. When I'm old and gray and my writing sounds like Larry King's Twitter ("I don't know about you, but I prefer my salmon cold!") I'll know that the old stuff is there, forever. E-books never go out of print. And I want to live those years knowing that everything I wrote was good, or as good as I could make it.
I have plenty of critics, but the one criticism that will never stick is any claim that I'm lazy, or that I dashed off work to cash in, or meet a deadline. Whatever they may say about me, they'll never say I didn't put the effort in.
As for your question, is it worth it? I can't tell. I just know that I have a really narrow window of opportunity to create things while people are still willing to pay for them. I feel like I have a responsibility to create while I'm capable and while people are listening. Audiences don't hang around forever, eventually they'll find something they like better and I'll get too old or my ideas too repetitive. We mock pop stars and pro athletes who go bankrupt two years after the fame ends for not saving money, for not realizing that what they had was temporary. Well I do realize it.
I've been on the other side, I've talked to other writers who never made it, I know how fragile this all is. So yes, I'm going to rewrite every sentence five times. I'm going to work 90 hour weeks. I'm going to get everything I want to say down in writing, in the best possible way I know to say it, knowing that once it's done it's done. When I'm old and gray and my writing sounds like Larry King's Twitter ("I don't know about you, but I prefer my salmon cold!") I'll know that the old stuff is there, forever. E-books never go out of print. And I want to live those years knowing that everything I wrote was good, or as good as I could make it.
I have plenty of critics, but the one criticism that will never stick is any claim that I'm lazy, or that I dashed off work to cash in, or meet a deadline. Whatever they may say about me, they'll never say I didn't put the effort in.
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