How To Show Up Every Day For Something That Will Never Make You Money

Love it just enough and not too much

I was put on this earth to write fiction.

It sounds wishy-washy, but the more I write, the more I know it. There’s a feeling it gives me of being at home, of channeling something inside me that is bigger than myself. It’s beautiful, and it’s pure. And it’s something I must do, even if it never makes me a dime (which will almost certainly be the case, given that I write literary fiction and not thrillers or romances).

For you, the must-do may be an art form, like writing, making music or painting. Or a labour of love, like growing a vegetable garden or building your own furniture from scratch. Something that you do because you’re heeding a call from a higher power to channel that deep, undeniable something within you.

Of course, pretty as it sounds, heeding that call has downsides — big ones. There are no rewards along the way, no monthly payouts or predictable bonuses. And even at the end, the reward is mostly the thing that you have created — and some fame, if you’re very very lucky.

Which means that the only thing you really have to keep you going is your love for the act of creating and your motivation to make the best of your project.

But here’s the deal about love and motivation — they need frequent refills. You need to remind yourself every day of what you’re working for, and that gets hard real quick when

you get creatively blocked
you hear about that classmate of yours doing superbly at their job
you see the crazy success stories of those further along in your art field
you get snide remarks from a family member like “so, where’s that book you said you were gonna write?”
or — on the flipside — you get opportunities that could bring you tons of immediate money if you just allotted more time to them

A project that runs on love alone is like a fancy car with crappy mileage — pretty soon, it’s destined for the scrap heap.

Which is why so, so many people abandon the things that they love for things that bring them money and security. And I can’t blame them one bit.

Here’s what I’ve learned over a long, fragmented journey of learning to live with my artistic side:

Life is hard, and art alone will not get you through it
The brain needs rewards to keep going
Money is non-negotiable
‘All you need is love’ is a Beatles song, and frankly, about as temporarily useful as a Beatles song

I needed to design an artistic life around these four facts — and now, in early 2023, I can finally claim to have at least some version of that life. To anyone else who’s heeding the call to pursue something because they must — what follows isn’t a blueprint, but it’s honest advice based on real challenges that I continue to face. And in the pursuit of art or a labour of love, honesty is a quality you just can’t do without.

Have a source of income

First things first. Money enough so you can survive and creatively thrive. Ignore people who tell you that true artists must think beyond money, because believe me, you’ll feel the pinch and the pinch is MEAN.

More than once, I tried stopping my freelancing and just writing fiction. It was a disaster. I was constantly stressed and guilty about money, which obviously made it way harder to write anything.

Even if you aren’t as prone to stress as me, I think we can agree that money keeps the wheels going. Have a job, have a freelance business, have a trust fund — heck, have a rich patron to mooch off. But make something is paying the bills.

Have clear long-term and medium-term goals

What is it that’s the end goal of your artistic pursuit? Art is lifelong, yes, but what is something that you would describe as a big, recognizable long-term milestone for what you’re doing?

My long-term goal is a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, to be won within the next seven years. It’s clear, it’s ambitious, and it’s not unreasonable (I started writing nearly three years ago, so seven years later I’ll have ten years of writing experience).

If you don’t have a big goal like this, find one. And it doesn’t have to be a prize or scholarship. If you’re gardening, for instance, your big goal could be having a space where you grow enough produce and herbs for yourself and your family all year round.

Medium-term goals are the intermediate steps to the big goal. They represent enough achievement to be externally recognized, while being doable sooner and more in your control.

For this year, my medium-term goal is a completed, agent-ready book of fiction. Writing it is in my control, unlike winning the Pulitzer, and it’s doable if I put in enough effort.

Create daily positive associations

It’s all too easy to associate your pursuit with struggle and anxiety. Rewire your brain by setting up small positive associations for it — things that you can do every day to get your mind going “yay, it’s project time!”

I associate my fiction writing with oat cappuccinos and blueberry scones at my favourite local cafe. I can go there whenever I want, the items are affordable and I get a ton of writing done when I’m there.

Even if I don’t go to the cafe every day, I’ve trained myself to think about the coffee and scones whenever I think about my writing — in other words, something happy, which then spills over to the act of writing itself.

Give it a Goldilocks time allotment

Your project is important, but don’t let it consume your whole day. Work on it for a stretch of time that’s “just right”. You can choose to have one block or multiple little blocks throughout the day, but define it clearly and use only those blocks for the project.

There are two advantages to this approach:

You don’t sit and brood about the project all day (which will absolutely happen if you just pick it up whenever you feel like)
Mental associations are created with that time allotment so that your brain knows to make as much of it as possible

Treat each day like a new start

This is royally hard to execute, but don’t let today’s failures spill over to tomorrow’s task list.

I’ve done the whole compensatory thing over and over, and it never works. It creates unrealistic expectations for the next day, ratchets up the pressure, makes you extra-stressed about not fumbling and thus makes you fumble all the more.

In the kind of pursuit you’ve chosen, there will be tons of days that don’t work out. Get used to it. Move on from it gently, and treat each new day on its own terms.

Have a bank of good memories

Make a list of all the times when the project went well. Examples are:

When you made a breakthrough on something that had been troubling you for a while
When you got a reward along the way, like a story being published or a paid commission for your handwork
When someone gave you a genuine compliment
When someone pepped you up on a bad day
When you got an unexpected amount of free time to work on it

List them all, however big or small — write them down if you can, or at least make a firm mental note of them.

On bad days, go back to your memory bank and pull out one of those moments. Let yourself go back to when it happened. Remember the joy you felt and savour it all over again. Remind yourself that that joy happened, and that more joy like that awaits you — you just need to keep going and move past this bad day.

Develop an uber-thick skin

You will need this to deal with an outside world that simply isn’t kind to passion pursuers.

You’ll see people close to you either failing to understand what you do or choosing not to.
You’ll see people in your field getting accolades after accolades.
You’ll see your peers in more lucrative avenues making bank.
You’ll see people on social media living the dream life with lots of money and travel.
You’ll see solopreneurs preach the importance of monetising your passion so you have more time for your “hobbies” like gardening or writing fiction or painting — the very things that are your passion.

You need to be able to see all that and not go nuts about why your life and your decisions aren’t like theirs.

It’s hard, massively hard. I’m still liable to get triggered by some 19-year-old influencer on LinkedIn buying a car with their solopreneur income. But I’ve trained myself to:

Shut the app and close my eyes and breathe until the stress eases
Remind myself that comparing my life with theirs is useful to neither of us
Unfollow their posts if I sense that I will feel triggered again

It’s not easy. But I have to do it, for my own sake.

Reevaluate your goals at intervals

Doing this every month or so gives you a reality check on whether you’re truly on track to hit those medium-term and long-term goals you set.

Chances are, you may not be, especially at the earlier stages. A lot of people respond to that by forcing themselves to work faster and harder in less time.

I don’t recommend this. Pushing yourself is great, but not at the cost of quality — and in a passion pursuit, quality is pretty much the whole point. I thought my book of short stories was ready last year, but then I reread my manuscript and saw that it was actually nowhere close to being ready. My old goal of “pitch book by 2022” had to be shifted to 2023 — and if something goes wrong this year, I will shift it again.

You know your own limits best. Don’t force yourself to do more than you can; at the same time, don’t kid yourself that something’s done when you know it’s not. This isn’t like conventional solopreneurship where a minimum viable product is enough to get started— this is about excellence. And excellence cannot be hacked.

If you must back off, do so

I don’t care if this sounds like a negation of the whole article. And I don’t care if passion project gurus hate me for this.

I loved writing since I was in kindergarten. Words did something to me I couldn’t begin to understand — when I wrote, it was like some spell had taken over me. And yet, after school and college, I gave up writing for years. I had my reasons — mental health, family trouble, financial considerations. Some people I’ve spoken to about it have said “but you could still have written”. Could I, in theory? Maybe. But given my circumstances? I’m just glad I get to write now.

There are serious, urgent problems that people have to deal with. Money crunches. Health issues. Family needs. Natural disasters. An internal crisis where you’re reassessing yourself and everything you stand for. Sometimes, it’s just not possible to put a love of art above immediate considerations like those. And if you’re currently in that boat, here’s what I want you to do:

You are not “giving up” on your passion.

You are not weak.

You are not lacking.

You are doing what is necessary for you right now, and that’s perfectly okay.

Hold on to your passion, by all means. And when you can come back to it, do so with dedication. But if life demands that you lay it down for a while, lay it down, and do so with confidence.

Conventional solopreneur advice doesn’t speak enough about people like us, so let me appreciate you for what you’re doing. There is something within you that deserves to come out and that you’ve chosen to hone a voice for, and that’s extremely brave.

I won’t lie, it’s a long and lonely journey ahead. And the lack of money and rewards doesn’t make it any easier, and if at any point you want to bow out, that’s your right.

What I will say is — the call to create something special does not come to everyone. It isn’t just about talent — it’s about an ability to love something for the beauty it can potentially be. I first heard the call to write when I was five, and through everything that came after, the call continued to say to me: Do this. This is who you are. This is what sets you apart. And finally heeding the call at 26 was one of the best things I ever did.

So if you can — if life, your mental health and your own convictions permit you to — give that art form or labour of love all you’ve got.

Someday, somewhere down the road, it will pay off.