Hi friends,
For so long I have been telling young writers that the thing you need to be to get through this career is persistence.
But I was wrong. The thing you need is courage.
Courage when the numbers on the overdraft in your bank account keep rising and you refuse to take on more work for money so you can finish that novel.
Courage when that novel doesn’t sell.
Courage when the next one sits on your agent’s desk for over a year.
Courage when you turn down a lucrative sum of money, money that could pay for the bed that you promised your son you’d buy him four months ago but still haven’t, but that will take away your ownership of your art and give it to a corporation.
Courage when they write entire articles about you, discussing in detail what a c*nt you are and why you deserve to be killed in six different ways.
Courage when the writers whose careers you helped build and supported when they were unknowns attack you publicly as a means of bringing attention to themselves.
Courage when they hold you up to an imaginary standard and then tear you down when you don’t adhere to it.
Courage when you become insignificant.
Courage when the stories you spent shoving down into dark corners for decades erupt suddenly on to the page and send you down depressive, harmful spirals.
Courage when you become significant.
Courage when that struggle doesn’t lead to success.
Courage when it does.
Cheers,
Natasha