Responsibilities

We all have them. Some choose to ignore them. Kudos to you. I, however, cannot. My mother had a mantra (well, she had many mantras), “We all have to do some things we don’t want to do.” Now I repeat the same mantra to my daughter every week morning when she is rolling around on the floor because she is tired and rather sleep than go to school.

This saying is one with which us writers are very familiar. Most writers have a day job that pays the bills. During our 9-5, we daydream about being able to write full-time. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? Absolutely! What stops us? Responsibilities. But just because we are responsible for putting food on the table, paying the mortgage, and keeping the lights on, doesn’t mean our responsibility to our craft is any less important. Many of us would probably go insane if it we didn’t have our writing as an outlet and a means to keep the nice young men with their clean white coats at bay. It is truly a balancing act.

What you need to remember is this:

You do what you have to so you can…

1. Take care of your loved ones.

2. Continue your craft.

If that means flipping burgers so your baby can eat, be the best damn burger flipper there ever was. After all, how could you expect to get any writing done if your baby is constantly interrupting you saying, “Mama, I’m hungry.” If you have to work on computers to pay your car note so you can attend writers’ conferences, by all means, W-E-R-K!

Few things are more important than your writing. One of those is your family and friends. Period. Regardless of anything else, people should ALWAYS be valued over all else. If we start to value our passions and dreams more than the people who care about us, we’ve got a problem. After all, what fun is finally achieving your goals as a writer when you have no one to share your success with?

C. L. Parson