I can’t tell you the number of times I have heard, or read the phrase “write like it’s your job.” If you want to be a writer, you need to make time to write every single day. Get up early, stay up late, do what you have to do to care out time to write. Write like it’s your job. Um….NO! See here is the thing. I already have a job, a full time job, and it literally drains the life out of me on a daily basis. I’m a teacher, and it’s hard work. Just like I’m sure your job is hard work. We work our jobs like they’re our jobs, because they are. We write because we love to write.
We write because we love to write. We write because we have to write. It’s our passion, it’s what fuels us. Writing gives us a voice, a platform to be heard, a way to share the stories that fill our brains. That is why we write. Don’t write like it’s your job. Write like it’s the passion that fills you. Write like it’s your reason for being, because it is.
I have big writing dreams. I’m guessing most people that write do. We’re all hoping to be the next J.K. Rowling, or James Patterson, or Nora Roberts. For them, writing is a job. For those of us that aren’t there yet, don’t listen when people tell you to write like it’s your job. You don’t have to listen to me either, but I think you should write, but write whenever you can, or whenever you need to. If you have something in you that needs to come out, you’re going to write like it’s more than your job. You’ll write like it’s your passion, you’ll find the time to get those words on paper.
Maybe you are the type of person who can get up an hour earlier in the morning to write, or stay up an hour later writing. I’m not, and I know this about myself. Where I am in my life, I’m not going to be able to write like it’s my job, and that’s okay, because I write like it’s my passion. Am I the next J.K. Rowling? In my mind I am, and for me that’s what matters, because writing is my passion. So I’m not going to write like it’s my job, teaching is my job, and I teach like it is. I’m going to write like it’s my passion, because that’s what it is.