What if You Could Only Be a Writer the Rest of Your Life?

Would you do it?

The barrier to entry to become a writer is zero. Pick up a pencil and paper. Make words in some semblance of recognizable order. You’re now a writer. Magic!

The barrier to entry to become a great writer is almost too high. Many before us have tried. Many have given up before their time. When you’re naive and starting, you don’t know what you don’t know. Then you discover the wall. And the wall is tall.

So, how bad do you want it?

This is the question we should ask ourselves.

There are plenty of average writers. More terrible ones. Few greats. I think we ask the wrong question when we first grab the pencil.

What if your vocation was writing?

Could you do this the rest of your life — the whole typing and living in your head thing? Are you committed to getting better every day? Do you want it bad enough to deal with keeping a day job for the next fifteen years before your writing pays for your addiction of living indoors? Can you handle the criticism and the self-doubt. Can you see a project through to completion, despite all these hurdles?

These are the questions we should ask ourselves.

I get a lot of ho-hum emails every week, from honest, sincere, caring people — unsure if they have what it takes to start writing. I should give honest responses, but I always offer words of encouragement.

But the truth is they’ve already talked themselves out of greatness before they started.

Bad writing is easy. We’ve all nailed that. Good writing is really hard. I can’t speak to great writing yet. I’m still chasing it myself. When we start writing we need to ask ourselves the hard question first.

There are 10,000 easier ways to make money that writing.

We’d better love writing for the sake of writing, whether we get paid or not. The money may come as a byproduct of good work, but we can’t ever start writing just to make money.

No one wants to be a money when they grow up.

Only a writer?

I’d give my left leg to chase this vocation the rest of my life. I believe writing is one of the noblest arts there is. Without writers we’d be stupid, un-entertained, knuckle-draggers the rest of our short existence.

The writers before us blazed the trail.

It’s up to us to carry the flaming pencil. To stand on the typewriters of giants, and to honor their sacrifices — correction fluid and all.

You can write in any capacity you wish, of course. If you want to write commercially it’s best to develop thick skin early. If you want to write for yourself, do that.

Please don’t let life get in the way. Are you in or out? Are you read to writer your face off for the next fifty years or will you flame-out next week?

There’s no endgame with writing. There’s only the next project.

Whether you write books, articles, or Tweets, there’s no finish line.

The best we can do is better than the last. I believe it’s important to be all-in or none at all. There’s so much mediocre writing, we’ve reached out tankful. What we lack, however, is great writing.

Because great writing is near, damn impossible.

Because great writing makes you sing for your fruit snacks.

Because great writing gets noticed, passed-around, and lauded like none-other.

And if we can’t be great writers, at least we can act like them. We can aim the compass in the right direction. There’s no room for anything less. We’ve got to act like we plan to write the rest of our lives, even if we haven’t convinced ourselves yet.

It’s time to join the most-noble vocation that ever existed.

… and if you want your future readers to buy your writing once you release it, you better create a reader’s list now, so you’ll have an audience when you do publish. This should be a list you own (instead of relying on some precarious social platform). Tap the link below. Enroll in my Tribe 1K indie email masterclass. I’ll show you how to get your first 1,000 subscribers (and your next 1,000) without spending one hot nickel on ads.

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August Birch (AKA the Book Mechanic) is both a fiction and non-fiction author from Michigan, USA. As a self-appointed guardian of writers and creators, August teaches indies how to make work that sells and how to sell more of that work once it’s created. When he’s not writing or thinking about writing, August carries a pocket knife and shaves his head with a safety razor.