You Are a Writer or a Dreamer
You commit to the craft, or you are a dreamer chasing the illusion of writing
Dreamers talk about writing.
Dreamers buy a box of expensive journals, the must have pen, create the perfect writing space and endlessly read about how to master the craft, but they write nothing of value because writing is always secondary when you are in the dreamer stage.
Writers write every day and commit to the grind.
Writing at your desk early in the morning, dressed in your favorite writing baggy sweats, holding a cup of coffee with both hands, and staring at your keyboard waiting for a spontaneous combustion of brilliance, is not the sexy fantasy many people have about being a writer.
You are a writer, or a dreamer, but you can’t be both
You commit to the craft, or you are a dreamer chasing the illusion of writing. You were born to write, and if you believe that, there is no backup plan, no other options for you in life and no Plan B.
There is writing every day and maybe a “real” job now to pay for your writing life, but you live to write and there is no other option in your soul how you will live.
Hemingway would drink until dawn, stagger to his desk, and write five pages before going to bed; occasionally with his wife, maybe a friend of his wife, or someone random was in the bar that night listening to his endless stories of traveling the world as a writer.
He would then get up at noon, fish, drink and begin the party yet one more day, but he still wrote those five pages every single day resulting in many books and an endless stream of correspondence as a journalist.
Henry Miller left the U.S. just to write. He would explore Paris until the sun came up, or until he ran out of money and his friends stopped buying him free drinks, partylike the Bohemian he was born to be, but still get to his desk and write five pages a day.
The legend is that he would often type with a naked woman in his lap, and he still got five pages in a day. When he ran out of money, he wrote pornography for a $1 per page, but at least he wrote.
