I ran across a sign in the background on a woodworking video that said “Nobody Cares. Work Harder!” Just because I think it’s a pretty cool channel, go check out Shara Woodshop Diaries over on YouTube, but that’s not really what I’m getting at.
The simple fact is, no matter what you’re doing, it’s not about getting attention, it’s about doing your best. I’m mainly going to talk about it in relation to writing, but it’s just as applicable in everything else.
The problem that I see near constantly, especially from amateur writers, is the constant desire to show off, or at the very least try to get recognition for absolutely anything that they do. Now granted, it’s not limited to writers, the aforementioned woodworkers suffer from it just as badly. It’s always “I made a lot of mistakes but I learned a lot”. Cool. Go fix your mistakes. Come back when you’ve got something worth posting. There is a never-ending array of total crap being posted on Reddit, just because they want people to give them recognition.
Screw recognition. You get recognition when you actually get good at something and these people simply aren’t. You get good by putting in the time and effort to get good. I wouldn’t say if these people were looking for help but most of them aren’t. It’s just something they crapped out this morning and decided to throw up online because they want praise. Writing, like woodworking, is a largely solitary activity. You get better at it by spending time practicing over and over again. It seems strange to me that lots of people can’t get that through their heads.
Yet there seems to be something else that most people under the age of 40 aren’t aware of. Nobody gives a damn about you. Nobody cares about your feelings. We don’t care who you are. We care what you can do.
Stop whining and get back to work.
I don’t care if you poured your heart and soul into a short story. I just don’t. If it’s good, great. If not, get back to work and make it better. I’m just not concerned. I have no vested interest in your feelings and neither does anyone else, yet there is this bizarre idea out there that everyone has to care and has to cater to everyone’s fee-fees.
And that’s utter bullshit.
Writing isn’t a group activity. It’s something that you spend hours and hours and hours at by yourself and you keep doing it until you learn how to do it right. My basic advice to beginners is this:
Read a lot. Write a lot. Have realistic expectations. Don’t give up.
If you can do those four things, you’re on the right track. Reading teaches you how to write. It teaches you how stories are put together. It give you an insight on how characters work and basic story structure. You cannot learn to write well unless you read. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying to you. It’s all crap.
Secondly, you have to write. It can’t be something that you do when you’re “inspired”. You do it whether you want to do it or not, otherwise you will continue to suck. Like any other skill, it is only honed through repeated practice. If someone has a dream of being a professional baseball player, they don’t go out and play only when they feel like it. They’re out there first thing in the morning every single day. It becomes a defining factor in their lives. The same goes for anyone who wants to get to the Olympics. It’s not something they might do on a weekend. It’s something that they do all of the time.
Then, you have to have realistic expectations and this is a big one that a lot of people get wrong. They think they’re going to write for an hour once in a while in their underwear and make a million dollars a year. That’s absurd. Most authors, no matter how they’re published, never make enough to pay the bills. They write because they love it but that doesn’t guarantee they’re going to find an audience. Money is important, but the overwhelming majority of published authors have a day job to keep a roof over their head. If you think you’re going to be the rare exception, you’re being an idiot. Knock it off. If that happens, great. You beat the odds. Chance as that you won’t though. Prepare for the most likely course.
Finally, if you give up, you never get anywhere. It’s all the people who can’t even make it through the first draft on a book, the people who get frustrated and throw it in the trash and never start again, those people simply fail. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, writing isn’t for everyone, but I keep seeing people online whining “I can’t write a bestseller so I’m quitting!” Yeah, how do bestselling authors get to that point? By writing. It’s why the majority of books that are uploaded to Amazon never go anywhere. They don’t immediately and magically sell and the authors just give up. They never write another book. They never do any marketing, period. They refuse to invest in their own success. They want the easy way out and there is no such thing when it comes to writing. It’s all hard work. It will always be hard work. Deal with it.
In the end, nobody gives a damn about you until you earn it. Nobody cared about Stephen King when he toiled in anonymity, sticking all of his rejections on a nail. Nobody cared about J.K. Rowling when she was rejected by publisher after publisher. They had to earn their success and so do you. Stop looking for notoriety, get your ass back in the chair and keep working. Prove you’ve got what it takes. Nobody is going to believe you until you can prove it.
Get back to work. Nobody cares. Work harder.
