{"id":1472,"date":"2010-05-24T12:57:00","date_gmt":"2010-05-24T17:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/?p=1472"},"modified":"2010-05-24T12:57:00","modified_gmt":"2010-05-24T17:57:00","slug":"monday-motivation-work-hard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/2010\/05\/24\/monday-motivation-work-hard\/","title":{"rendered":"Monday Motivation: Work Hard"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignright\" src=\"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/images\/hardwork.jpg\" alt=\"Hard Work\" width=\"250\" height=\"399\" \/>I&#8217;ve only read one Amy Tan book: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/0345457374?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=thejugwri-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=0345457374\">The Bonesetter&#8217;s Daughter: A Novel (Ballantine Reader&#8217;s Circle)<\/a><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;\" src=\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=thejugwri-20&amp;l=as2&amp;o=1&amp;a=0345457374\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" \/> (Affiliate link). The novel&#8217;s protagonist is a ghost writer, and Tan uses the character to point out some of the pitfalls of being a writer when it comes to the way others sometimes view the profession:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>People thinking you have time to pick up their dry cleaning.<\/li>\n<li>People thinking you have time for lunches that last all afternoon.<\/li>\n<li>People thinking you have time to play tennis, shop, or hang out.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Many people think writing&#8217;s this easy thing that just happens when <a href=\"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/2009\/11\/12\/my-muse\/\">the Muse<\/a> decides it&#8217;s time. Nevermind the years of skill it takes to get good&#8211;people say things like &#8220;I want to write a novel someday&#8230;&#8221; as though writing a novel is something done on a whim that everybody can do.<\/p>\n<p>Imagine the response if people said, <em>&#8220;I want to do a triple bypass on somebody&#8217;s heart someday&#8230;&#8221;<\/em> or <em>&#8220;I&#8217;ve thought about creating blueprints for a skyscraper someday&#8230;&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve heard people talk about how &#8220;lucky&#8221; full time writers are, as though making it isn&#8217;t a matter of drive and talent, but rather, some literary lottery where one day you&#8217;re toiling away on a loading dock or in a cubicle, and the next you&#8217;re invited at random into a literary society where you meet in the evenings to sip sherry, discuss writers of yesteryear, and do all kinds of &#8220;lucky writer things&#8221; things until you&#8217;re inspired to write.<\/p>\n<p>Writing&#8217;s hard work.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t mind hard work. In fact, I <em>love <\/em>that writing a novel isn&#8217;t easy.<\/p>\n<p>Writing doesn&#8217;t physically exhaust me like some <a href=\"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/2009\/11\/02\/odd-jobs-help-writing\/\">jobs I&#8217;ve had<\/a>, but it takes something out of me in ways no other task ever has.<\/p>\n<p>Most people who read <em>The Juggling Writer<\/em> have day jobs and write when they can. Most of you know that writing isn&#8217;t easy. Easy is sitting down in front of the television after a day&#8217;s work to relax.<\/p>\n<p>In its own way, writing really can be a bit like donning a hard hat, climbing on top of a big chunk of concrete you worked hard to pour, and then attacking that chunk with a hand drill to make it something more.<\/p>\n<p>This week, I hope everybody works hard, and has a lot of fun building something cool!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve only read one Amy Tan book: The Bonesetter&#8217;s Daughter: A Novel (Ballantine Reader&#8217;s Circle) (Affiliate link). The novel&#8217;s protagonist is a ghost writer, and Tan uses the character to point out some of the pitfalls of being a writer when it comes to the way others sometimes view the profession: People thinking you have [&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":[24,23,29],"tags":[67],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1472"}],"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=1472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1472\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}