Write What You Want, Not What You're Told
Editors and teachers, cover your ears, but one rule is failsafe
The Russians have a saying: “Work isn’t a wolf, it won’t run off into the woods.” It’s the argument of a friend popping by with a bottle before noon. (In Russia you can tell a boss, “Sorry I’m late. I had to get drunk for three days and wake up shirtless on a park bench in Ryazan.”) What sounds absurd is good advice. You’ll rarely look back and regret choosing life over work.
Every good writer has a strong work ethic. The job requires an obsessive nature. However, if you’ve chosen this life, no matter what title is printed on your business card, your real job always is to get better at this. Editors and teachers will wince to hear it, but if you don’t want to write that article on interest rates for Whatever.com or that essay on “King Lear and Trump” you still owe a nagging PolySci professor, don’t, but in one case only. If you’ve got a real itch to write something else, scratch that instead.
Inspiration is rare. Some writers toil whole lives and never know it. Others (some claim this is worse, though I disagree) only feel it once, and spend the rest of their lives haunted. There’s a reason Joseph Heller was trying to bring Yossarian back to life three decades after Catch-22. You may not regret passing up a bender to save a job, but you will regret passing up that flash of insight that might have resulted in that one poem, essay, story or novel you might have to give to the world. Work always comes back to your doorstep. Great ideas run into the woods. Don’t let them get away.
I just started in my writing journey. I am obsessive, but to a fault at times. But my inspiration is rooted in the sense of Camaraderie I get when I read what you and Michael write about. The dire need for what you offer is what compels me. I may not have a college education. I may just work in construction for a living, but it’s the exposure to my fellow workers that made me realize how much is left unsaid, and how much is hidden from them. “Someone’s gotta do it, I guess.”
Same goes for making art or playing music.