It's no secret that I want to make a living off of my writing. Being able to focus whatever hour of the day on my creative projects, without having to schedule around a day job, would be absolutely incredible. It's my ultimate goal of where I want to end up.
I think there's a risk associated, though, with striving to achieve such a thing. Generally, people don't begin creative hobbies for the money--we're attracted to them because we love to create new things, be them stories or paintings or movies or whatever. It's what makes us happy, and that's wonderful. And there's nothing wrong with wanting to make money off of something that makes you happy.
The thing is, though, there is a fine line between writing for yourself and writing for money. And it's very easy to cross it. I would know; I crossed that line, myself. And I didn't even realize it.
I suffered a bit of a slump during April. Or maybe that's just what I've been telling myself, to feel better about having come so close to my goal for Camp NaNoWriMo. Either way, I was stressing. When I returned home from PEI a year ago, I promised myself two things:
1) I would move out by my 20th birthday, and
2) During this time at home, I would finish a manuscript. Written, revised, edited--everything. Done. Completed. Fini. Simple, right?
Not so much.
Despite the constant planning with my friends--and the constant discussions at work--the whole moving thing seemed a million years away. It wasn't until a few months ago, probably around March, that I realized it was only five months away. Five months.
And suddenly, life was moving too fast. Weeks were racing by at break-neck speed, days were soaring out the window as though they were nothing, and I was left in a frazzled, stressed, panicked state. It was like my final year of high school all over again--a day was coming, and once that day arrived, my life would change forever.
I am excited to move out, I really am. I'm excited to be independent and on my own and just to have a fresh start in a (semi) new place.
But I'm also terrified.
And, among all of this chaos, there was my writing. Projects that I had anticipated to be well on their way to completion were left at an eerie pause halfway through the first draft. Suddenly, my goal to have a manuscript finished and polished didn't seem so plausible anymore. It wasn't just discouraging--it was downright frightening. This, the very reason I had left university in the first place, wasn't even going the way it was supposed to. If I couldn't handle this now--living with my parents, with only a part-time job and minimal bills to worry about--how could I possibly hope to handle it in the months to come, with bills galore and a full-time job and other independent, adult things to worry about?
I wasn't sure if I could do it. So, my mind turned to the prospect of money.
The goal was no longer to have a polished manuscript--no, it was to have a manuscript ready to sell and several ebooks on the Kindle market, to help the flow of money. If I start making money, I assumed, then I couldn't consider the past year a failure.
No. Just....no.
It dawned on me, halfway through April, just what I was doing. I wasn't writing for myself anymore--I wasn't focusing on the stories I loved more than anything, on the things that actually made me excited to sit down at my desk. I was just writing for the sake of being published, for making money.
I write for the story. I write because there's a message I want to share, characters I want to introduce, a whole world that I want to make known. I write because I have a story to tell, and only I can tell it.
But honestly? That's not why I started.
To be continued next week!
Until later,
- Justyne
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