{"id":1252,"date":"2010-03-22T12:00:22","date_gmt":"2010-03-22T17:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/?p=1252"},"modified":"2010-03-22T12:10:20","modified_gmt":"2010-03-22T17:10:20","slug":"monday-motivation-against-the-odds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/2010\/03\/22\/monday-motivation-against-the-odds\/","title":{"rendered":"Monday Motivation: Against the Odds"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignright\" src=\"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/images\/dice.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"336\" \/>&#8220;It is impossible to discourage the real writers &#8212; they don&#8217;t give a damn what you say, they&#8217;re going to write.&#8221;<br \/>\n&#8211; Sinclair Lewis<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I&#8217;ve heard many working writers tell would-be writers that they should give up before ever really trying.<\/p>\n<p>There are many reasons for this:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Some writers feel the industry is already <a href=\"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/2010\/01\/15\/crowded\/\">too crowded<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Some writers know it&#8217;s a profession that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/2009\/09\/13\/book-advances-how-much-money-do-writers-make\/\">typically doesn&#8217;t pay well<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Some writers know if somebody gives up that easily, they don&#8217;t have what it takes to be a writer and they&#8217;ve done everyone involved a favor by weeding that person out.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>For every writer I&#8217;ve seen who tried discouraging would-be writers, I&#8217;ve seen <em>piles <\/em>of would-be writers absolutely sure they would make it writing.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>You talk with them at parties, and they go on and on about how they will one day be famous&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>You see them in school, talking about how once they graduate, they will go to Europe and write <em>the Great American Novel<\/em>.<\/li>\n<li>You see them at work, talking to people about what they plan to write, but never seeming to actually write.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>One day, you see most of these writers stop and move on to &#8220;real jobs,&#8221; tossing writing aside for something more secure. (And there&#8217;s nothing wrong with that.)<\/p>\n<p>But there are writers who don&#8217;t stop, no matter what.<\/p>\n<p>Work, deaths in the family, illnesses, children, and other things don&#8217;t stop them. If something much bigger than a writer telling them to quit won&#8217;t stop them, nothing will.<\/p>\n<p>These are the writers with the best odds of making it; these are the writers who keep their heads down and write no matter what gets in the way.<\/p>\n<p>Are you this kind of writer?<\/p>\n<p>The odds are stacked against us all. If those odds don&#8217;t discourage you and you&#8217;re willing to put a decade or two into something most people drop after dabbling, you increase your odds of making it each week.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s the beginning of the week for most of us, so get busy writing!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;It is impossible to discourage the real writers &#8212; they don&#8217;t give a damn what you say, they&#8217;re going to write.&#8221; &#8211; Sinclair Lewis I&#8217;ve heard many working writers tell would-be writers that they should give up before ever really trying. There are many reasons for this: Some writers feel the industry is already too [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":""},"categories":[24,29,4],"tags":[67],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1252"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1252\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}