I've just read two really great articles. Normally I don't share articles here, but this time I feel compelled.
Kristine Kathryn Rusch is someone every writer should follow. Not everything she writes about is going to be right for every writer–not even she makes that claim and be wary of anyone who does–but her finger is on the pulse of the industry, and she knows what she's talking about.
Her latest post made my heart race. It made me so happy, and made me excited to be a writer all over again. I don't know that I have a choice. I'll always write. But the aspect of writing that makes me happiest is not a paycheck, but readers. Whether I have two or two million, I write for them as much as I write for myself. Having said that, I'd rather be writing full time. I have so many book and story ideas sometimes my head feels like it's going to collapse like a black hole and open into another dimension. But I don't have time. The only way to make time is to lose the day job, and I can't until writing pays my bills.
That is at the core of my excitement about Kris' post for this week.
Fame: honestly, I wouldn't know what to do with it and I suspect that it's not all happy joy-joy (as in, not everyone would be happy with my writing and might confront me about it. They might even want to hurt me.) Fortune: I would love to be able to travel more, so I could write more deeply about other ecosystems and cultures, and I'd love to be able to fix up my house, especially the parts that are dangerous and dirty and I could really use some help with the landscaping, but I don't actually need that much. That's probably a good thing, because fortunes usually don't drop in writers' laps, even if they're very fine writers. But having enough to write full time … that would really be something. That post gives me hope. My goal is achievable. And that same goal is achievable for a lot more writers than it used to be.
The second post that gave my heart a happy workout this morning was this post by Lisa Cron. I've been struggling with producing back copy for my books. I've heard variations of this concept before, but this came at the right time and in the middle of the right project. Writers hear a lot of advice and often it's the same good advice over and over. It helps to hear repeatedly not because writers have particularly thick skulls, but because the ability to apply that advice changes, and what we think to apply that advice to also changes.
So, now that I'm ready and eager to write … it's time to go to work.
But there's hope, and the future is still wide open.