The act of becoming a successful and published writer is slowly becoming more clear to me that it’s not exactly easy to do. Reading these articles, which tell about how certain writers have had to overcome hardships, adversity, within even themselves and family/friends, to publish something meaningful to both them and their respective editors/publishers has shown me something. What that is exactly has become more apparent as I read each article. That “thing” that I’ve been shown is determination and even more importantly, time.
In one article a woman talks about how she wrote for 8 hours everyday, being a stay at home mom I’m sure that meant she had to conduct her free time wisely. She stated something along the lines of making her husband do the grocery shopping and picking up the kids from school and/or other afterschool activities.
Now, first off, I would like to state, I’m not trying to be sexist or biased about stay-at-home mothers (or I’d at least like to think I’m not). Though, we all don’t have time or luxury to do what she did to become published. I can’t just decide to up and quit my job and start writing from home for 8 hours a day, every day, even as much as I would love to. I have to work; I need money, so my free time is few and far between, and would continue to be even if I weren’t attending college. That’s not to say what she did did not require determination and an impeccable amount of personal will power. Just the act of keeping myself away from screwing around between facebook and other social outlets found online is hard to do. So, I do have a lot of respect for these writers who actually made it to the "big times" and finally got published. It’s just I don’t have the time or money to go away to a retreat in Colorado every weekend to look at a woods and ponder different ideas for my writing.
Another writer I read about in the articles was actually in a hospital for most of his days while he wrote. This guy actually had his idea come to him through his own physical trauma while in a hospital bed with Crohns Disease. So he spent his days and nights absorbing the people and personal problems around him so he could have a fresh account of ideas to take into his non-fiction piece. This is probably the only way I would be able to have the time to dedicate myself to my writing and making it good enough for publication.
Which has got me thinking. Maybe I should throw myself down a flight of stairs, “accidentally” of course, I bet that would make for a pretty interesting piece, wouldn’t it? So, from this point forward, I’ll be on the lookout for the next time I’m laid up for awhile with an exorbitant amount of free time. Hopefully I wont be in too much pain to spend some time with my lap top.
In one article a woman talks about how she wrote for 8 hours everyday, being a stay at home mom I’m sure that meant she had to conduct her free time wisely. She stated something along the lines of making her husband do the grocery shopping and picking up the kids from school and/or other afterschool activities.
Now, first off, I would like to state, I’m not trying to be sexist or biased about stay-at-home mothers (or I’d at least like to think I’m not). Though, we all don’t have time or luxury to do what she did to become published. I can’t just decide to up and quit my job and start writing from home for 8 hours a day, every day, even as much as I would love to. I have to work; I need money, so my free time is few and far between, and would continue to be even if I weren’t attending college. That’s not to say what she did did not require determination and an impeccable amount of personal will power. Just the act of keeping myself away from screwing around between facebook and other social outlets found online is hard to do. So, I do have a lot of respect for these writers who actually made it to the "big times" and finally got published. It’s just I don’t have the time or money to go away to a retreat in Colorado every weekend to look at a woods and ponder different ideas for my writing.
Another writer I read about in the articles was actually in a hospital for most of his days while he wrote. This guy actually had his idea come to him through his own physical trauma while in a hospital bed with Crohns Disease. So he spent his days and nights absorbing the people and personal problems around him so he could have a fresh account of ideas to take into his non-fiction piece. This is probably the only way I would be able to have the time to dedicate myself to my writing and making it good enough for publication.
Which has got me thinking. Maybe I should throw myself down a flight of stairs, “accidentally” of course, I bet that would make for a pretty interesting piece, wouldn’t it? So, from this point forward, I’ll be on the lookout for the next time I’m laid up for awhile with an exorbitant amount of free time. Hopefully I wont be in too much pain to spend some time with my lap top.
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