The Reason You’re Not Writing And How To Change That

For many people, their ideal life is to be a writer. They imagine themselves sitting at home writing and earning a ton of money from it.

The trouble is, that while this is the ideal, it’s rarely the reality. In fact there is a big difference between wanting to write and wanting to be a writer. There is even a well-known saying about this:

“The difference… between the person who says he ‘wishes to be a writer’ and the person who says he ‘wishes to write’… the former desires to be pointed out at cocktail parties the latter is prepared for the long solitary hours at a desk.” ~ John Mortimer (writer best known for the TV series, Rumpole of the Bailey and Brideshead revisited).

Yet even for those of us who really love to write, it can still be really hard to actually sit down and write every day. This is what we call Resistance and even some of the world’s most prolific writers suffer from it.

So why is this?

In my humble, yet extremely accurate, opinion, it’s because writing is a job. It’s work.

When you see someone sitting and typing on their computer or writing in a notebook, it’s easy to think that they’re not doing much at all.

So it seems to others like an idyllic life. But writing is work and the most successful writers work hard.

Novelist Agatha Christie wrote 66 novels, Stephen King has so far written 61 novels and 200 short stories (that are not that short IMHO) and Issac Asimov wrote over 400 novels, which goes to show that successful writers are prolific writers.

But even more than that, they want to write. They dream of writing not of being a home.

If you want to write but don’t want to write huge novels, then that’s OK too because there are many different ways to write.

For instance, there are millionaire bloggers who can earn a good living writing short posts.

But what you really need, more than anything else, is the wish to write. Great writers aren’t necessarily the best writes, they just outwork others.

They understand that being a writer is a solitary profession. When you’re writing it requires 100% focus. You can’t speak, can’t sing, can’t watch TV. When you’re writing, you must be focused and working without any distractions.

But if you’re willing and prepared, then there’s no reason why you cannot be a prolific and financially successful writer.

I used to work full-time when I first started to write,. Then I changed to part-time work so that I could write more. And eventually I gave up working as an employee so that I could work as a writer instead.

What I found was that not only could I earn all my income from my writing, but I could write anywhere.

All I need is some quiet, uninterrupted time every day, with just me, my notebook and a pencil and my laptop computer. It’s such a portable way to work and a real Laptop Lifestyle.