Motivation

I know that many of the people who stop by this blog are writers themselves, most of them struggling through the indie market. So, today, I have a question for you.

What keeps you motivated?

I'll admit that I am not always super motivated. I go through periods where I think, "what is the point?". Still, I love to write and I always come back to it, usually within a matter of weeks. I doubt that I'll ever quit writing for a truly significant period of time.

We all have to start somewhere. For writers it's a blank page, an idea, and hopefully a plan. That's the easy part. The difficult part is all of the rejections and the years of work chasing a dream. Very few people work for free. Cabinet makers don't install cabinets because they love to do it. Writers do write, paid or not, because they love it. By nature of our passion for our work, we make it seem cheap to others.

I follow new people every day on twitter and get followed by new people too. Almost all of them are writers and most of them have not yet been published. With so many great novels floating around, it's easy to see why it is such a fight to sell anything. The longer you're in it, the more clear that becomes.

Yet, we keep trying. Hope over experience. I think that is a wonderful thing. Sometimes people have to look at all of the ways to fail, and still say, "I can succeed."