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What’s Making It Hard to Find My Passion?
Finding our passion has become the new “dance like no one’s watching.”
Passion has become the new byword for vocation — an occupation or activity at which you’re particularly good and to which you feel a strong attachment. In short, it’s your calling in life, and you’re supposed to find it to allow you to follow the perfect career.
There is a bottomless well of advice out there on how to find your passion. But what if you’ve read all the articles, done all the exercises, and still can’t figure out what your passion is?
The Self-Loathing of Authorpreneurship
“All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy….”
So writes George Orwell in the conclusion of his essay “Why I Write”, which — as the noted historical novelist Thomas Mallon has recently observed — displays Orwell’s “clear awareness that self-loathing and self-love are locked in a tight, procreative embrace.”
According to Orwell, the generative interaction between self-regard and shame are first on the list of reasons writers decide to write.
“Sheer egoism. Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on the grown-ups who snubbed you in childhood, etc., etc.”
As we’ll see, it’s often their emotional reactions to childhood snubbing — or similar experiences — that drive writers to take action, become authorpreneurs, and begin the hard work of building their brand in a competitive modern marketplace.
What Would It Look Like If I Started Replying to Queries and Pitches With GIFs?
I receive a lot of pitches and queries for submission here at Craft Your Content, for my own writing, and on a number of the client websites we help to manage.
Most days, going through these submissions is a highlight for me.
I love finding pieces that are genius and should be published and read. I adore finding pieces that need a bit of work, but I know are going to be pretty damn amazing after some polishing. I even enjoy working on pieces that have a great story and concept, but need a lot of heavy lifting to get it ready for public consumption.Continue reading
A Writer’s Emotional Toolkit
There’s a huge amount of technical help and guidance out there for us writers.
From grammar geek websites to detailed historical information sources, it’s never been easier to access the technical resources necessary to write. Need to pen an article on electric cars? A short story with a scene in Prague? A perfectly punctuated piece of dialogue?
No sweat, the Information Age has you covered.
However, there are some things the internet can’t help us with. (I know, I said it.) Things like the vulnerability to expose your weaknesses. The resilience to cope with hostile or indifferent responses to your work. The self-knowledge to speak to something deep and true in other people. The courage to say something you feel without someone else having said it first.
These are the things I’m calling a writer’s emotional toolkit. As a writer, you probably use many of these techniques without realizing it.