As soon as I’d read this day’s prompt, my inner critic shouted “trick question!”.
Archive and background:
Day 1. What’s your story?
Day 2. What are you trying to protect me from?
Day 3. What do you treasure?
Day 4. What should I be doing instead of working?
Nothing! You should be doing nothing BUT working, knocking out two, three thousand words a day, and also blog regularly, and promote yourself on social media, and don’t forget all those comic conventions!
Write more, write fast, because you have other story ideas in your head, so get the current ones out and start new ones, faster, faster.
All this ‘working for a living’ business – screw that, you can’t possibly consider yourself a serious writer if you don’t do it full-time. Who cares if not having a steady income messes up your mental health? Art should be your life, suffer if you must, become a starving artist if you have to.
If your life is too comfortable, you’ll never create! Art must be the only worthwhile thing in your life, otherwise you’ll never be motivated!
Write, and write some more, you’re not allowed to do anything else. If you’re not working on an art project, you’re wasting your time. Every step you take must be in service of your art, of your goals, of success.
…And this, ladies and gents, is what happens when you take life-long perfectionism, add a business education, and multiply the result by a mid-twenties decision to become a writer “for real”. I think I’ve got material for another blog here: the fact that I’ve had so much more fun creating before I decided to “get serious about it.”
(Oh, and the starving artist thing? Don’t get me started. Anyway, Chuck Wendig has a good piece on that.)
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