Writing for Passion

I started writing stories because I loved writing stories. It’s the way many people start in this field. I loved the world I had begun creating. I could get lost in it.

Until I got lost in something else.

In the past year I found myself not wanting to write as much, avoiding it almost. Writing wasn’t for me anymore, it wasn’t for the world or for the fun of it, it was because I had to write. Because I wanted this to be my job and I was running out of time before my kids were school aged and all of a sudden all of this pressure was cascading down on me because sales weren’t going the way I wanted them to go.

Marketing is HARD.

The book market is flooded with amazing and horrible books alike.

I’m a no one in the world.

All of these things started to churn and instead of flowing I’d turned my passion into thick, sticky, going nowhere butter.

Getting back to the roots of passion was hard. Do I want to make a living writing? Yeah, duh.

Do I want to share my world with the world? YES.

But more than anything else, I needed to remember that I wanted to write these stories. Not just think of them, or go through the outline, but put the work into writing them and then reread them.

I needed to write for me, because when I compromised my voice and my work to be “more marketable” not only did I lose sales, I lost any desire to read my own writing, which used to be my favorite thing to do.

What do you do when your passion fizzles?

Some people say don’t turn your passion into a job because it destroys it. That an be true, I’ve been there and I’ve seen it happen to myself. What I realized along the way was that I hadn’t lost my passion, I still loved stories and writing and creating.

What I had lost was confidence. When you don’t make the sales you want you start to think about all the things you’d done wrong.

In groups, it’s pretty clear that the insta best seller isn’t a common route. People write 20+ books to make a decent living. People mess up. It’s learning process.

None of that mattered at rock bottom though. I needed to separate the ideas. There was camp 1: I write and love the stories I write and camp 2: I publish and market the stories I write.

It isn’t the world’s job to validate my passion, it’s something that is inside myself. The more I practice separating these two ideas the easier it is getting to write again.

I’m still working through this idea, working toward joy and passion again, but I’ve recognize that there is only one way for me to get back to that place of writing stories I love: with acceptance.

I have to accept that my voice, the one that is true to me and my stories, is the only way I’m ever going to love writing. Maybe it won’t sell. That’s a risk I have to take for myself. For my love of this art.

I’m a newer author, I’ve only written a few books entirely. Im learning, and I’m allowed to fail. I’m allowed redos. I’m allowed to keep improving. I’m allowed to tweak my voice, as long as I’m not acting like a chameleon and trying to copy other voices. That doesn’t work for me.

What does work is trying. Is writing because it makes me happy. Telling stories because I want to tell them.

I want to get better, I would love to make a living writing, but I’m accepting that this isn’t about the money. This is about my calling. I’m not a seasoned author and I am working at it every day.

But I’m going to be myself along the way.