In a recent study, 83% of Americans reported that they'd like to write a book. Eighty-three percent. But the interviewers asked the wrong question.
Would YOU like to write a book? Would you like to sit, for the next two years, struggling to wrestle your language into something cohesive? To organize and reorganize; to amend and edit? To put forward your text for critical review? To risk time, attention, and your sleep in order to put pen to paper? To risk the discovery that you can't do it? To potentially begin, never to finish, occasionally throwing good prose after bad, for the rest of your life?
- or -
...at a cocktail party, one year from today, would you like to have written a book? Would you like to be able to claim that you've been published? Would you just like to be able to say that you're an author?
The difference between an 'author' and the rest of us isn't talent. The creativity gene is a lie. The difference is work.
"You know, I think I'm going to run a marathon / climb a mountain / jump out of a plane before I die." Good notion. Most won't ever follow through, though. Because the hard part isn't making the decision; it's moving your feet. And then doing it twice. And then, a third time. Every morning, you'll have to convince yourself - again - to keep going.
Doing hard stuff isn't like an elevator. It's like a staircase high enough to obscure the top. Experience helps...but that's hard to get, too, isn't it? It's also very specific: despite being a father of two awesome kids, I don't consider myself qualified to give much in the way of birthing advice.
I think you know what's coming next. What's the most common sentiment among spectators at big events like FranFest, Murph, and the Catalyst Games? "I wish I'd done it." Because the finishers are the only ones who get to wear that badge afterward. They're the ones who will be telling the story tomorrow, and it's theirs to tell. Achievement ain't comfortable, but it beats the hell out of a book with no chapters.
Comments