Photo by Yannick Pulver on Unsplash
I mean, who wouldn’t want to write the next bestseller in just thirty days?
At the same time there are resources out there who generally want to help. Sure, they’ll sell you a book, but their free stuff is pretty good as well. You just have to be choosy.
I have enjoyed reading both The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles and Do the Work: Overcome Resistance and Get Out of Your Own Way by Steven Pressfield. And I’m currently following not only a writing course (offered for free, and appreciated) but also his weekly posts.
What hit me most this week was the phrase:
Nobody wants to read your sh*t.
Well, crap. So to speak.
But he’s right.
You don’t have time to read my writing. You don’t have time to check in every day and see what I’m rambling
about. I mean, appreciate that you do and I hope that reading my blog is worth more than a daily game of Wordle.
But you and I both already have too much to do.
In yesterday’s post, Pressfield quoted author Liz Gilbert (author of Eat Pray Love 10th-Anniversary Edition: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia) who said, “I will never ask you to support me. I will support you.”
Gilbert went on to say:
I’m going to keep doing what I love, writing what I think is the truest work from my soul … betting that sooner or later either I’ll get good enough at it to make people want to read my sh*t … or people’s taste will catch up to mine.
So, I’m taking their advice.
I mean, I’m already sort of doing this. Along my journey from the days I used to say “I want to be a writer” until I was finally able to declare “I am a writer,” I tried to write what I thought would sell.
I worked for a content mill. I did political commentary. I blogged for community blogs.
None of that made me rich. Or fulfilled.
Sure I could have made a career out of copy writing. But I already have a day job that, while I’m thankful for it, isn’t what I want to be doing when I grow up.
So, I’ve decided to write my own stuff. What I want to read.
That you might or might not show up here occasionally to read it, is great.
But until that day that I reach the New York Times bestseller list and make enough bazillions to able to retire to my beach house, wear sweaters with patches on the sleeves, and type out the next Great American Novel (TM) on an old Smith Corona typewriter, well I’m just going to write my own…stuff.
On this day in 1959, Rock and roll musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J. P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson died in a plane crash along with the pilot near Clear Lake, Iowa.
THINGS YOU SHOULD READ
The Washington Commanders cheerleaders head to training camp.
Whoopi Goldberg isn’t the only one who doesn’t understand antisemitism
The Washington Post
Liz Gilbert’s Deal with Herself
Steven Pressfield
Washington announces new team name: Washington Commanders
NFL
BORN ON THIS DAY
@Public Domain
1809 – Felix Mendelssohn, German pianist, composer, and conductor (d. 1847)
1811 – Horace Greeley, American journalist and politician (d. 1872)
1894 – Norman Rockwell, American painter and illustrator (d. 1978)
1904 – Pretty Boy Floyd, American gangster (d. 1934)
1918 – Joey Bishop, American actor and producer (d. 2007)
1940 – Fran Tarkenton, American football player and sportscaster
1950 – Morgan Fairchild, American actress
1956 – Nathan Lane, American actor and comedian
WHAT I’M READING
BENEDICTION
Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.
Ephesians 3:20–21