To Do or To Have Done?
There’s an important question when choosing your pursuits: Do you actually enjoy the hard work of doing the thing, or do you like the idea of what you imagine it would be like to have done it?
There are two ways, for example, in which I love being a writer.
I love the idea of being able to spend my days at home, to shape my own schedule — rigorous, yes, but not without grilled cheese sandwiches and walks in the fresh air — to tell people I’m a writer, to collect hefty royalty checks and periodically release good, gripping mystery-fantasy-comedy novels with a touch of philosophy and some life-changing spiritual insights worked in so deeply I wouldn’t be able to sell my books in the Christian section.
That would rock. Sadly, it’s probably not what being a (full-time professional fiction) writer would actually look like at all. More to the point, it’s miles from the life I’m actually living. It’s a pretty picture, but fundamentally irrelevant as long as it’s not turning into steady, systematic execution.
Luckily, the second way I love writing is that I draw massive mind-bending soul electricity from typing lots of words really fast, then erasing most of them and starting over, and repeating that process over and over until the words hum with meaning, ring true to the core, shimmer and dance and set sparks in peoples’ souls. Gah! I can’t stand how much I like filling a blank page with words. I could sit here all day — I do sit here all of some days — punching my brain until sentences come out, then squeezing the sentences until the brilliance positively drips from them.
Point is, pick the thing that you can’t stand not doing, not the thing that will be awesome once you’re so good that you don’t have to do it any more.
