After my accident, I was in a hurry to get back to my life. I didn’t care about what had happened to me and I didn’t always listen to the doctors and other professionals who were trying to help me. My neuropsychologist had warned me about brain injury survivors having a “Short fuse,” but I didn’t understand how it applied to me. Because of this tendency, I made a lot of poor choices in those early days after my accident.
- I didn’t listen to others.
- I didn’t rest enough.
- I didn’t do the work needed to recover.
Determination and grit can get us so far, but if we’re not careful, they can keep us from our goals in life. In the end, my determination did more harm than good.
The writing life has a similar balance: our drive and determination can motivate us or detour us. In this digital age, writers have a lot of choices to make about their careers. There are training processes, writing processes, the publication path, and ultimately time management. The latter is one I struggle with at times, but my recovery process has trained me to choose wisely.
Choose Wisely!
If you’re just starting, perhaps you have not yet realized that the writing life is a steady stream of choices: fiction or nonfiction, plotter or pantser, word choice, angle, who is my target audience, self-publish or traditional?
The answers to these questions will help grow your writing career. Writing is as much a job as it is an art. Successful writers do the work to get where they are and have chosen wisely.
A few years ago one of my professional writer friends in the South published a list of hard choices writers must make:
1. Trading TV time for writing time. You’ll need those hours to put words on paper.
2. Committing to a lifetime of learning and staying current with the publishing industry. The industry is changing at a lightning speed, so either keep up or die.
3. Saying no to the good things, so you’ll have time to say yes to the best things. Writing is an isolated life a lot of the time.
4. A willingness to write through the junk to get to gems. Good writing is rewriting—don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
5. The necessity of checking your ego at the door. There’s always someone more talented, successful, lucky, etc. Get over it and move on.
6. A willingness to trust other professionals—like your agent, your editor, and your critique partners.
7. An unwillingness to compromise what truly matters. And no this does NOT contradict #6.
8. Trading talking about writing for actually putting words on the page. Networking is important, but not as important as writing.
9. The commitment to keep going when the odds seem impossible. In this industry impossible odds is the new normal.1
These choices are personal because we are each different. Some will be easier for others and vice versa. Actress Helen Mirren famously said, “You write your life story by the choices you make. You never know if they have been a mistake. Those moments of decision are so difficult.” Making different choices is part of being a professional.
Professionals?
Living with a disability has humbled me and painfully reminded me that I am not perfect. But I can do better and so can you. As we pursue our writing goals, we must understand we’re not perfect, but we must learn to be professional.
As you read this, I am preparing to leave for a four-day-long writers conference. The conference is about more than just having fun and catching up with old friends, it is a time for learning the craft, networking, and meeting industry professionals in hope of becoming a professional writer myself.
Being professional comes with even more choices we must make as writers. Often they require tremendous patience. Patience while we learn the craft, patience while we craft our stories, and patience while we put together our professional team of:
- Mentors
- Editors
- Agents
- Publisher
Regardless of where you are in your career, you’ve already made important choices. Think about them. Remember, as a writer you must take your time, do your research, and choose wisely!
Martin Johnson survived a severe car accident with a (T.B.I.) Traumatic brain injury which left him legally blind and partially paralyzed on the left side. He is an award-winning Christian screenwriter who has recently finished his first Christian nonfiction book. Martin has spent the last nine years volunteering as an ambassador and promoter for Promise Keepers ministries. While speaking to local men’s ministries he shares his testimony. He explains The Jesus Paradigm and how following Jesus changes what matters most in our lives. Martin lives in a Georgia and connects with readers at MartinThomasJonhson.com and on Twitter at mtjohnson51.
1 https://thewriteconversation.blogspot.com/2018/12/hard-choices-all-writers-must-make.html?m=1
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