Guest K. Ferrin: The Hardest Thing You’ll Ever Do

I was about nine years old when I wrote my first story. I was very excited about the assignment, I loved writing even then. But what I remember most clearly is the lightning strike of inspiration I got when the story idea popped into my mind. It seemed to come straight out of the aether – some gypsy-voodoo-black-magic that I’d somehow managed to get on me or to step in. It felt as if it had come from out there, rather than from inside of me. From that instant I was hooked, I wanted to write novels.

Like many authors, I continued to write over the years. Also like many authors, I never finished a novel. I wrote while I rode the wave of inspiration but when inspiration abandoned me I abandoned the story. For decades I left villains at their peak, deserted heroes at their point of greatest weakness, relinquished half written stories to the shadowy depths of my hard drive.

Somewhere after that first lightning flash of inspiration I’d picked up the habit of seeing writing itself as gypsy-voodoo-black-magic that came from out there. And if it came from “out there” that meant I had no control over it. If the muse stopped weaving her magic what could a mere mortal do about it?

This sort of thinking infected me in all sorts of ways. When I was nine I wanted to be a writer. By the time I started college I’d given up writing and wanted to be a biologist or chemist. I left college with a BS in Criminal Justice (pre-law) and by the time I started working in my first “real job” it was in technology.

Meandering paths are not uncommon when we’re young, but what might not be so obvious is that, for me at least, the spaces between those bullet points were because the shiny rubbed off. Things got hard and I sometimes lost my motivation. There was no magic, and there should always be magic… right?

So instead of working hard for what I wanted most, I spent my time working a little for what came easiest. It was easy to blame the fickle muse for this. To hide the path of least resistance within the guise of magic-from-the-aether. To claim I was an artist following the path of inspiration. But eventually I started to wonder about this muse of mine. What kind of sick bitch was she to start me down one path only to yank the rug from under me and send me careening off in some new direction?

Now, to be clear, we should follow our inspirations. Inspiration is an expression of our intuition, it tells us where our passion lies, where our talents reside. But believing that people accomplish things because they’re gifted with gypsy-voodoo-black-magic is a mistake. The truth is that finishing stuff is hard no matter who you are. And it takes a lot more than inspiration to carry things through to the end. The truth is, finishing is the hardest thing you’ll ever do.

Inspiration is designed for the start. Sweat, dedication, and courage are designed for the finish. I’d lived my life waiting for the magic. I’d made the mistake of believing all I needed was that magic and I’d forgotten all about sweat part.

But the actual writing part, the doing, is sweat and courage. It’s showing up every single day no matter where your muse is. Some days, the magical ones, words flow like warmed honey. Other days it feels like you’re crawling across a mile of used needles, bloody hospital scalpels and poo.

You see, finishing has nothing to do with inspiration and has everything to do with hard work and the courage to keep to your path. It’s refusing to give in to the blank looks you get from people when you tell them you’re a writer, it’s continuing with your efforts even when you see no results. It’s not glamorous. It’s actually quite ugly. It often involves crying. There’s almost always blood. But after all of that, at the end of the day, when you have finished, it is pure magic.

 

K. Ferrin started writing fantasy just after learning her ABCs and has never looked back. Magicless, a young adult fantasy novel, was published in 2014. Across the Darkling Sea, book one of her Ling trilogy, will be available in April of 2016. She lives at the foot of the Rocky Mountains with her husband, two dogs, and a relentless craving for pie.