On Never Working a Day in Your Life

By: Kameron McBride

I think most people are pretty familiar with the phrase "when you love what you do, you never have to work a day in your life," or at least something similar to it, right? I think this is a common phrase attached to writers in particular, where it's easy to think they are people with jobs they love and therefore never have to work. This is unfair to writers who really do work hard all the time to actually produce any piece of writing.

I think at times people believe writers are just wonderfully creative people who sit in a circle, smoke a peace pipe, think of creative things and then go to sleep. Then, while they slumber, little elves tumble out of their ears and hop on the keys at their computer or typewriter until the story is done. And while I am exaggerating I do think there is a perception that writers don't necessarily have to work that hard. Instead they just plop in front of their computers and bang out a novel, preferably to the tune of an 80's movie montage.

This is not the case.

If you want to write or be involved in writing it's important early on to realize how hard you're going to have to work. With this post I just want to lay out what I've learned about writing thus far and talk about the fact that writing is really hard work, often filled with long nights and enough coffee to choke a sperm whale.

I'm not a writer of any note, I don't have lots of publications to throw at you and I haven't made a single cent on my work, however I still stick to a writing and regimen every single day. The hard part is that you have to do this every single day, like an exercise regime you constantly have to improving your writing.

Here's another point: writing is not immediately rewarding, at least not in a very tangible sense. For the most part it's up to you to stay motivated constantly and consistently be producing pages every single day, otherwise your writing skillz are probably just getting duller. There's no one constantly telling you when to write or how much to write or even holding you accountable for your writing, you have to always be on beck and call to be improving yourself.

What I'm essentially saying is that there isn't really a magic potion or something that writers drink in order to come up with their stories, it comes through a lot of hard work and pretty exhaustive writing schedules. I think when approaching writing it's important to really reject any romantic notion of writing and just write and write a lot.

I want to point out that I don't think writing is something that's not fun, I still think people should enjoy writing a vast majority of the time. I really enjoy writing, I enjoy watching movies and I love to coach soccer but there are plenty of days where all three of those things feel like real work. In fact, most days I work very hard at all three of those things and despite the fact I'm interested in them, it feels like hard work because I'm putting a lot of effort into these things. 

So when we say "you'll never work a day in your life" maybe we should change it to something like "you will enjoy your life" or "your work will feel even more more fulfilling" because you aren't really discovering something you will love every second, but something you are really willing to work hard at. Writers are willing to work hard at writing and that's how they can construct effective prose and tell creative stories. We need to recognize that writers work hard, otherwise we're just giving all the credit to the elves.