Writing Is Not Writing, It Is Allowing Yourself to Write

Writing is allowing yourself to have TTWs — Time, Talent, and Work... but it also requires SSF: Support, Strategy, and Funding.

But it isn't always about that, nor about discipline... it is consistency.

Today, an author can hardly be just a writer. You also need to think like someone who produces, distributes, promotes, and finds their audience. And almost everyone ends up running into the same thing: lack of resources.

This is not a formula for success, much less for greatness. It simply increases the possibility of a work being seen. It is a drop of oil trying to rise to the surface of an ocean full of other authors.

And since we're talking about reality, I can imagine you on Facebook selling courses on “how to sell your book.”

Forget it. Many times, you will only be helping the person selling the course grow.

This isn't flesh. It is the hard bone of reality: talent alone does not always make it through the silence.

Authors need to build an audience and abandon, at least a little, that blasé attitude toward promotion. Today we have tools that writers of the past could never have imagined. Creating is one part of the work. Distributing is another.

A work needs to reach people, while respecting each author's budget and limitations.

And perhaps the best example of this is the Bible itself. I'm not talking about faith or religion, but circulation. How many discarded Bibles have I seen? Many.

And, thinking about it, perhaps finding your book in the trash one day is a kind of success.

Because before being thrown away, that work reached a home, a hand, a person. It was read. It caused something. It lived outside of you.

A work in the trash may have lived more than a work forgotten in a drawer.

I am more like someone talking about the less glamorous side: budget, distribution, building an audience, rejection, and the need to accept that a work without circulation can simply become silence.

And there is another trap along this path: perfection.

If you already have a book written and know that there is a significant audience waiting for it, then it is worth investing in a professional edit. But if you are an unknown author, with nothing to lose, don't let the pursuit of perfection prevent you from releasing your work.

Many writers spend years revising, correcting, and rewriting when they could simply publish.

Perfection is sometimes just an elegant excuse for fear.

Think about J.K. Rowling. The first editions of Harry Potter had errors, repetitions, and imperfections. Today, some of those copies are valuable. What made the work relevant was not the absence of flaws, but what was inside it.

A work does not have to be perfect to have value.

It's like a beautiful apple with a small brown spot. Nobody throws the whole apple in the trash because of it. You cut away the blemished part and enjoy the rest.

Books are similar. A spelling mistake, a repetition, or a sentence that could have been written better does not invalidate an entire story.

If the idea is strong, the characters work, and the work manages to provoke something in the reader, these flaws are part of the whole.

The problem is that many people stop themselves from publishing because they see only the blemish.

The reader, many times, is interested in the whole apple.

Perfection is desirable. Quality matters. Revision matters.

But consistency matters too. Courage matters. And, above all, you have to allow the work to exist outside of you.

Allow yourself to exist as an author.

Allow yourself to be judged.

If someone reads your book and points out a spelling mistake, that means your work reached that person. It was read. It provoked a reaction.

In the end, perhaps what matters is not having written the perfect book.

It is having written a book that exists.

A book capable of crossing through another person's life.

Because a book that is never published cannot change anyone.

An imperfect book can.

Maybe the problem is that we romanticize fear.

We call it perfectionism when, many times, it is simply fear of being judged. We say that we still need to revise, improve, study, wait for the right moment.

And while we wait, the apple rots.

No work needs to come out perfect. It needs to come out alive.

A small blemish does not ruin an entire apple. A spelling mistake, a repetition, or a sentence that could have been written better do not invalidate a story either.

The problem is when we use the pursuit of perfection to keep the work away from the reader.

Because a work in a drawer can remain perfect forever.

It can also remain completely unknown.

A published work, on the other hand, can be criticized, rejected, torn apart, forgotten, or even thrown in the trash.

But before that, it had to reach someone.

And perhaps a work in the trash has lived more than a work forgotten in a drawer.

In the end, perhaps that's it:

We don't need to wait until we stop being afraid to publish.

We simply need to be careful not to turn fear into our editor.

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