I Want to Write My Passion, But I Need to Pay the Bills

Give voice to your passion, even as your goals as a writer change.

Most writers are drawn to platforms like Medium to be able to write whatever they feel passionate about, while perhaps earning a little something while doing it. It’s not unusual to hear new writers espouse an idealistic idea about following their bliss. They don’t care how many followers they have, how much engagement they receive, or how much they earn.

I am not using the term idealistic in a derogatory manner. I think in a perfect world, this would be the goal for many if not most of us, to be able to write to our hearts content without the need to care about mundane concerns. We would ignore things like stats, whether an article was popular enough to earn a significant sum or whether we needed to up our game and publish more frequently instead of perfecting one story over a couple of weeks.

Let There Be Light

At the beginning, we have a feeling of extraordinary freedom, something we’ve perhaps not felt before in 9 to 5 jobs which provided no creative outlet and dictated the course of our days. Suddenly, we can explore whatever we want, write about new topics we’ve never thought about before and try our hand at new genres like fiction or poetry. We discover we can do so much more than we ever thought possible. We start publications, draw graphic stories, share experiences involving hobbies, travel, recipe fails and successes, create photo essays or video montages. We are on fire and the writing world is our oyster.

Getting Caught Up In the Excitement of Community

As time goes on and we become more involved with a platform, we are socialized directly or indirectly by veteran, well established writers. One thing we have in common is the desire to continue growing and developing. To do this, we often look to those who have accomplished what we’d like to some day and who we see as a version of what we’d like to become.

We read their articles on how to become successful writers and interact with them through their work. We join Facebook groups or forums to be able to interact with them more directly. We read posts and move to actively participating in discussions, asking questions, and giving feedback.

We learn how reinforcing it is to share out work and have others compliment and applaud for it. We get caught up in the numbers, the applause, the announcements of new achievements and records broken, invitations to join special groups and become publications editors, the contest wins and challenges completed. As all this occurs our mindset begins to subtly shift.

Recalibrating Our Goals and Balancing Our Needs

In the midst of all the excitement, one day we wake up and wonder if this was what we had intended to begin with. Did we really want to do all these things, explore countless topics, try every genre, enter every contest, participate in every challenge we come across, just because we can? Is that truly the nature of freedom or at least the kind of freedom we were seeking when we imagined our ideal writing life?

When we think about our ideal writing life or following our bliss, there are obviously reality based necessities that will need to be met and we all differ as to how much they dictate the form our writing life takes. For some of us, the income is crucial and gearing our writing to provide us with the highest earnings is a main consideration. For others, while finances aren’t a concern, gaining a following in preparation for other projects such as a book launch are the priority.

Regardless of what our major goals are, we can’t deny that we write publicly so that our words are read. Otherwise, we’d just keep them in a journal and be perfectly satisfied with that. We need to be honest with ourselves as to why we undertake this endeavor if we are to find a balance in our writing life that is fulfilling.

Wanting to have our words read, goes hand in hand with wanting to know they have been read and appreciated. This may translate into knowing our writing has somehow made a difference, whether helping people with a particular problem or just helping them see something differently. It may be enough just to know that a lot of people are enjoying what we write. But no one comes to write on a platform like Medium,if they view it like a black hole, just a place to write and never think about it again or care at all about whether it’s ever read.

It’s not wrong to be concerned with our stats, as long as this doesn’t become obsessive or negatively impact our writing. It’s not wrong to be concerned with how much engagement our articles are receiving or how many people are following our work. It’s okay to try to determine which of our pieces are the most popular and resonate with readers so we can create similar articles in an effort to “sell” our work. Being realists does not mean we are no longer real writers.

At the same time we need to be true to ourselves and not completely lose that new writer we once were, the one who was excited about everything and wasn’t concerned with the numbers only their passion. It’s important to always retain that idealistic writer within us, no matter what our goals become or what we decide we need to do to reach them.

Just because popularity, engagement and earnings matter to us and we monitor, analyze and research our topics and their outcomes to establish a growing following does not mean we can’t serve our passion as well. We may not always be able to write completely from passion depending on what our goals are. But we should always strive to find a way to regularly let that passion out and let it find its way to the page without concern of how it will be received.

Takeaway

Writing from the heart may not result in the numbers that we are seeking as part of our overarching goal. It may not earn much, financially. But it will serve another important function.

Letting ourselves return to that more innocent state of excitement and exploration we felt at the very beginning will revitalize the true writer within us. It will help us maintain our enthusiasm, for our other writing. Most importantly, when we write from that place of passion, it will remind us why we wanted to take on such a crazy thing as a writing life in the first place.

No matter where we our in our journey, when we remember to serve our passion as part of our writing process, we will always maintain the desire to express ourselves in new ways which will further nurture our growth.

Thanks to Brandon Michael Logan for the inspiration for this piece.

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You can also find links to all of the articles, stories, fiction and poetry I publish on Medium here. Thanks for reading!