Here’s actor Jeremy Renner on a recent episode of the Smartless podcast.
“I don’t really believe in hobbies. Either you do something or you don’t, right? I don’t have time to just dip my toe in the water. I’m not taking a ******* bath here in life.”
Where do you categorize your writing?
If you’re published and regularly publishing, this blog is not for you.
If you’re unpublished and working your way into the business, how do you think of your writing? Of your writing time?
It takes no effort—and no money—to move it from the “hobby” category to the “priority” category in your mind.
To the “treat it like a business” category.
To the “I’m taking this seriously” category.
In other words, from “dabbling” to “purposeful.”
It’s a mental thing.
I’m not here to demean hobbies. Hardly. But to me they imply “sideline.”
Like ostrich racing or trainspotting.
To me, hobbies mean you can do it or you can NOT do it.
Either way, nothing is going to change.
If you choose to think about your writing in a more serious way, you write a plan.
You set goals. You make a list of things that need improvement. You work on those improvements. It might be your craft at dialogue. It might be your comfort level when walking into a room of, gasp, other writers. It might be your ability to take feedback.
Whatever the issue, you are treating it as a serious matter.
Which it is.
And you continually adjust as you go. You set a six-month goal and you evaluate how you fared, readjust, and set new goals.
As Jeremy said, either you do something or you don’t.
Right?
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Photo by Andrey Tikhonovskiy on Unsplash
Yoda agrees! “Do, or do not. There is no try.”