I got a gripy email for last week’s post that pissed me off so much, I’m going to devote this entire post to ranting about it.
Here’s what this writer had to say to me, in part:
“I find it irresponsible that you would take such a stand [that you can have a successful writing career], to not acknowledge writers who don’t have the luxury to go all in [because they don’t have supportive partners].”
I’m irresponsible for telling you that you can make a success of your life if you choose to? Because you don’t have a HUSBAND?!
This, right here, is the defeatist woe-is-me attitude that allows people to pretend that their situation and their life is out of their control, that they are powerless to change it.
Going all in means committing. Going all in is not a “luxury.” Going all in means spending fifteen years consistently doing the work, even in the years that it doesn’t pay, even when it seems like you will never make it, even when nothing goes to plan, as I did for many years. Going all in means sleeping only five hours a night, so that you can do the work that will get you to your goals, as I have done all this month. Going all in means accepting that you have limitations but not allowing them to limit your dreams.
Going all in means DOING THE WORK. No matter what it takes.
Listen, there are two kinds of writers: There are the writers who have a dream, who believe they’re capable of achieving it, and will continue working hard, even if it’s five minutes at a time to get to it. The second kind of writer tells themselves that all the successful writers have easy, charmed lives and uses that as an excuse to not even try.
If you’re the first kind of writer, stay here, you’re going to get inspired. You’re going to learn how to believe that you’re fully capable of living your dream and making it happen. Because you are. You’re going to make it happen.
If you’re the second kind of writer, the person who feels sorry for themselves, the person who can’t take responsibility for their life, who’d rather sit and complain about their situation than do something to change it, please, for your sake and mine, leave now. Unsubscribe. Nothing I say will ever make sense to you.
Because I’m not going to hold your hand and coddle you and tell you that it’s okay for you to not make any effort.
There are dozens of writing websites that will do that for you. They’ll tell you that it’s impossible to make money writing and that it’s not your fault when your writing career is failing and that you shouldn’t be too hard on yourself because agents are evil, publishers are evil, the system is broken, and that no one ever made money writing. If that speaks to you, you should go listen to those people. Because I’m never going to say that.
I’m going to tell you that if you want to be successful (however you choose to define that success), you’re going to have to work really bloody hard, doing the work you don’t like such as marketing and negotiating and networking. You don’t get to sit on your ass and cry about how the industry hates writers because you pitched ten agents and they rejected you. Grow up. Take responsibility for your life and career. And when things don’t work out, don’t take the easy way and blame the world, the industry, the whatever. Look deep inside yourself and figure out what YOU did wrong and how YOU can fix it.
You only have to look at someone like Bamidele Onibalusi to see how your excuses are just that. Bamidele is a Nigerian writer who wrote in cyber cafes because he couldn’t get proper Internet at home. He constantly faced the challenge of getting people online to trust him because of the negativity associated with Nigerian scams. His family situation was hard, the technology was hard, getting people to give him work was hard. He did it anyway.
He did the work.
I do not have the patience for people who refuse to learn new skills, invest time and money into their career growth, who don’t market, don’t pitch, don’t find the time to write and then email me to complain that they’re not succeeding. Yet they’re on Facebook every day discussing how discrimination in freelancing holds us back.
Listen, we all know there’s discrimination in the world and that things are harder when you’re a certain gender or skin color or nationality. (Or all three, as it happens in my case.)
But if I can get published in some of the top publications in the world with a name like Mridu emailing editors from all the way in India, what is your excuse?
If Bamidele can make serious money with a name like Bamidele all the way from Nigeria, what’s your excuse?
Seriously, what is it? What is your excuse?
I have more than 300 students in my classes, many of whom come from very difficult situations and have immense challenges, yet they invest in themselves, they do the work, they TRY.
There is no excuse. None.
Stop lying to yourself. Stop acting as if you’re the only one in the world with problems. We all have problems. I do not come here and broadcast them to you because THEY DO NOT MATTER. I do not allow them to hold me back. I do not allow my problems to dictate whether or not my life will be a success. I do not give my problems the power to crush my dreams.
You can either spend your life chasing dreams or chasing problems.
Don’t take my definition of success. Create your own. And then do the hard work it takes to get to it.
If you have a dream, if you truly want to achieve it, then you’ll find a way. And if you don’t find a way, if your problems keep crushing your dreams and you keep letting them, then you’ll know. You’ll know that you don’t really want this thing that you claim to because if you wanted it, if you really wanted it, you’d move heaven and earth to go get it. You’d at least TRY.
Everyone’s got advantages, everyone’s got disadvantages. Most people just have excuses.
People who want to do it find a way. People who don’t will always find reasons why they can’t. So you have problems. Life isn’t fair. Tough. Deal with it. Try and be successful anyway, by your own definition of success.
Or not. Your choice.
And it is a choice. Don’t kid yourself about that.