Summary

Dedicating oneself to professional writing often means sacrificing perfection in other areas of life, such as maintaining a spotless home or excelling in hobbies.

Abstract

Aspiring to a career in writing necessitates a singular focus and the acceptance that not all aspects of one's life can be optimized simultaneously. The author shares personal experiences of feeling overwhelmed by the success of their book, only to be met with the realization of neglect in other areas, such as household chores and side projects. The article emphasizes that success in writing comes at the expense of time and energy that could be spent on other pursuits. The author argues that it's crucial to acknowledge the trade-offs and the high price of dedicating oneself to writing, which includes accepting average results in non-writing aspects of life. The piece concludes by encouraging writers to embrace the necessary sacrifices and to be proud of their progress, even if it means a less-than-perfect home environment.

Opinions

The pursuit of success in writing requires a significant investment of time, which inevitably detracts from other life areas.
It is unrealistic to expect continuous improvement across all life domains, and placing such pressure can lead to dissatisfaction.
Success in writing, or any significant goal, demands a clear understanding and acceptance of the sacrifices involved.
Exceptional success in one field often means average performance in others, and this is not a reflection of poor self-organization but a natural consequence of focus.
Writers aiming to make a living from their craft should anticipate and be at peace with a certain level of domestic disarray.
Accepting the trade-offs and the slow progress in side projects is key to achieving one's primary goal and maintaining mental health.
The decision to prioritize writing over other interests is personal, and the value of the goal should justify the sacrifices made.

If you want to be a writer, you can’t always have a clean home.

Or an impressive handicap in golf or high rank in World of Warcraft.

If you want to write professionally and earn your money with it, you have to dedicate yourself entirely to this goal.

Self-optimization gurus often make us believe that it is possible to improve all areas of life continually. If we think that, we are building an unrealistic pressure to succeed against ourselves.

We are not happy then, even if we can show significant success in one area. We continuously demand of ourselves to be successful not only in one thing but in all areas of our lives.

I, too, have put too much pressure on myself for a long time. When I had worked for weeks on a book, and it was finally on sale, I could never really enjoy this success before, because suddenly I realized what I had neglected while working on my book.

I was unhappy that my apartment was not tidy and cleaned.

It made me sick that I hadn’t managed to start another side project that I had wanted to do for so long. The more I got angry, the more things came to my mind that I hadn’t done just because I had to work on my book.

Success has a price

If we decide to dedicate ourselves to one thing 100%, it is in the nature of things that we must invest all available time and energy in that one thing.

To be able to make a living from writing is an achievable goal, but as with all purposes that are worth pursuing, we have to pay the price for it.

We pay this price primarily with the currency time. The time that we invest in writing and building our careers as writers can no longer be used for other things.

So the moment we decide to target a goal, we need to be clear whether we are willing to pay that price.

In my case, for example, writing comes at the expense of a clean apartment and other projects that I would like to pursue. For a long time, it was not clear to me that this had nothing to do with poor self-organization, but was inevitable.

It was only when I recognized that writing required one hundred percent of my attention and time that I made peace with not being able to achieve optimum results everywhere.

You won’t find an exceptionally successful entrepreneur who is also a world-class golfer or who spends hours every day improving his ranking in an online role-playing game.

Successful writers are not ambitious musicians or excellent chefs at the same time.

In most cases, writers who want to make a living from writing will have to resign themselves to living in a chaotic apartment because they can’t clean and tidy for two hours every day.

We have to live with the fact that we have to hectically clean up a few hours before our parents come to visit us because we will never manage to live in an apartment suitable for Instagram at any time.

That doesn’t mean that we don’t have hobbies and can’t take care of our social contacts. It just means that in most other areas of our lives that have nothing to do with writing, we will never be better than average.

Only if we are willing to accept this, we can reach our goal and stay mentally healthy at the same time.

I have tried for far too long to be perfect in far too many areas. This has fortunately been over for some time because I have decided to accept the price my dream has.

I will undoubtedly realize my other dream projects in the future, but I will approach them in baby steps and accept that my progress in these other areas will be plodding.

Whether the goal of living from writing is worth the price it demands is up to everyone to decide for themselves. But no one can ignore that this great goal actually has a high price. Only if we stop making unrealistic demands on ourselves will we later be able to enjoy our achieved goal.

So don’t be disappointed when dust accumulates on your cupboards. If it’s because you’ve spent a lot of time writing every day, you can even be proud of yourself.

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