Pay to Play

For the longest time I have wanted to be a writer. A question I have struggled with for years is this. Do I love writing or do I just enjoy the "idea" of being a writer? After a pretty fierce debate with myself I have come to the conclusion that yes, I do love writing.

The thing we struggle with though is that the part of our brain that comes up with ideas is different than the part that does the "work" of putting those ideas onto paper. You see it takes work to sit and hash out sentence after sentence. It takes discipline to do this and when you have not forced yourself into this discipline your writing muscles are week and flabby. It's time to pump them up!

When I go to different web sites or read books on writing, one of the most given pieces of advise is that if you want to be a writer you must write every day for an hour. The basic idea is the more you write the better at writing you become. I know, its kind of a no duh principle but its true. When it comes to coming up with creative ideas for stories and books my mental muscles in that area are pretty darn beefy. Now when it comes to putting those into words on "paper" they are very weak.

Now I need to tone up by actually writing. That is one of the main reasons for writing this blog. I have committed to writing seven days a week. So my hope is the more I write the better I will get at it. I also believe that it will increase my capacity for actually putting my ideas to paper.

Here is another way I would look at it. In his book Quitter, Jon Acuff mentions that his dream was to be a writer. He started a blog and nothing happened from it. He then started another blog later writing day in and day out for it. After years of blogging for free he was finally able to write his book, Stuff Christians Like. The way he summarized that experience was that he had to give away something like a million words for free before he could sell 50,000.

Another concept is what is called the 10,000 hour rule. Malcolm Gladwell took a look at a common factor in people who become great at what they do. Most people who are considered professional at what they do have put in about 10,000 hours doing it! You can check it out for yourself below!

No matter what we want to do, we must make time to actually do it. For me I have about a million words and 10,000 hours of writing to do. With some hard work and determination I might just accomplish the dream of someday becoming a published author. In short, we must pay to play.