A while back I came across a response from Kate Cavanaugh to Cam Wolfe’s vídeo ‘Is wanting a writing career enough?’
I admit that I got engrossed by trying to answer this… because it is a question that haunts all of my days.
Cam Wolfe stated some good points and made some questions.
I’ll redirect you for the original vídeo here: ‘is WANTING a writing career enough?? Discussion‘ and you can watch it fully on YouTube.
Here are his main points:
- Writing is hard: want to write; procrastination; earn a living;
- The cost of the dream: contentment? how much is enough? Wanting it is not enough; hustle for it; do all we can?
- My endgame: money, full dedicated to writing and videos (my vision); what’s your dream scenario? self-publishing or traditional publishing? or both to be believed? how to make it happen? how to understand what this dream requires? business aspects of the thing…
- Plans and updates (like marketing…).
My ideas on this subject… but, prepare yourself! There are more questions than answers here…
1.Writing is hard
Everything is hard. Working for others, in other careers is hard. It’s our mindset that counts and to think that: I get to do this.
Yes, earning a living is part of calling ourselves writer’s. Is it possible? Different sources of income seems to be the answer along with a good business plan.
Do I really want to do this? Do I really enjoy writing? Am I prepared to devote myself fully to my writing? To see it as a business? To show my writing efforts the same amount of devotion I have showed to all the former jobs I had?
2. The cost of the dream
How much does this dream costs? A lot. If we aren’t careful it can cost us our health, our friends, our family and our life security. But so does all the other dreams, and all the other jobs. Am I willing to sacrifice myself in order to sustain other people’s businesses, but not willing to do it for my own business?
Do I live a fulfilled life? A happy life? Am I content when I know that I have done this for a considerable amount of time and for my intended purposes?
Am I willing to compromise myself, my values and my beliefs, to make other people happy by not following my vision? Have I been doing all I can? Will I be doing all I can? Can I work with my flaws and compromise on efforts vs results? Is it ‘all or nothing’?
3. My endgame
What is my vision? What is my contribute to the bettering of this world and the people in it? Can I write you into happiness? Can I write you into motivating yourself? Can I write you into open mindedness? Can I write you into entertainment? Can I write you into hope?
Money is key. But without courage there is no work done.
Can I expand my sources of income? Do I have what it takes to make my work count?
4. Plans and updates
Make a business plan and take it seriously. Entrepreneurs need focus, drive, comprehensive understanding, knowledge of different things, input and output, a body of work and of different works. And accept the multiple sources of income mindset.
Here’s the link for the Kate Cavanaugh’s response to Cam. I found it very enlightening.
But, above all, I believe that…
There are much more to this theme than this. Yes, we need resources, money included, but we need a resilience that astounds me.
Yes, we need to evolve our mindset not just to Writing but to find other creative activities that complement our writing efforts. There’s no advantage in staying stuck in the dream mode (that’s how I feel a lot of the time: on dream mode!)
And we need to learn how to manage our time better. We have a short amount of time and a lot of responsibilities. Specially if you’re no newbie, like myself.
But, above all, I believe we have to learn to live in a way that nurtures our creativity and get us out of the grasp of burnout.
Everybody wants more of us. Some of them wants us entirely… and not in a good way. Finding balance is hard. And the product of all of this is: burnout.
I believe that, to live in contentment, in a healthy relationship with productivity, and motivated to come back every day, is the key to find our creative writing careers.
But I’ll keep looking for answers to these questions, that’s for sure.
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Bye and see you soon.