Motivation

Writing is hard work. It's not something to be taken up lightly. Any writer with a minimum of success will run into people who claim they want to be writers, or want to write a book. Often, if you ask them about what they've done, the answer is either nothing, or I have fifty pages of a book sitting on my hard drive.

I went through both of those phases. Nothing, or nearly nothing, is the wishful thinking of a wannabe writer. Sometimes it goes in fits and starts, with a few short stories every few years. Later, the aborted novel attempts begin.

The difference between a writer and a wannabe isn't publication, it's attitude and fortitude. Finishing a novel is a major event, and most people don't finish because it's hard. It's damn hard to sit down and open that file and put something into it. That's the hardest part of becomming a writer.

I became a writer in October of 2004. That's when I started the novel I finished. The effect of finishing a novel is profound. 1) You have a finished product. 2) You know you can finish a long project. 3) You learn something about writing and finish the project a better writer than the one who started it.

My first novel ended up being completely reworked after two years. The writer who wrote it the second time was a completely different writer than the one who wrote the first one. I had grown so much that I removed an entire sub-plot and still doubled the word count from 74,000 words to 115,000 words.

Bottom line, you can do it if you decide to do it.