Watching the Olympics is a great pastime, but it’s always interesting to see the reporters, many of whom have never competed in a sport themselves, criticizing the winners and dissing those who didn’t medal. The comments reveal more about those commenting than their targets. If you have been or are an elite athlete, or you’ve been the parent, brother or sister of one, you know how much time, money and effort goes into training. It’s not a fair-weather activity that you do when you are in the mood, neither is your training something you can double-up and catch up with in a flurry of activity.
it’s grinding, daily, early morning workouts, afternoon practice, evening exercises. It’s day-in, day-out relentless pursuit of your goal, even when you don’t feel like it or you think you don’t care anymore.
Every four years you might get a chance to measure your skills against the best in the world.
And if you have a bad moment, it not only could cost you a win, you’ll be hearing disparaging remarks from couch potatoes with access to the internet.
Why am I telling you this?
Because it makes writing look easy.
Think about it-
- If you spent a fraction of the time the athletes do, you could produce volumes
- You don’t have to wait for an opportunity once every four years
- If you “fail” you can pick yourself up and go at it again
- With few exceptions, you don’t get too old to write good stuff
- You can take holidays off, if you want
- It doesn’t take tons of money to write, you don’t even need an MFA
- Critics don’t have much power, your fans will carry more weight with new readers
- Competition can become allies and together we can reach a bigger audience
These are just a few of the advantages of writing, and I’m sure you can think of more – share them below.
Happy writing!
