Taxes and the Death of My Passion (It's Funny If You Think I've Done My Taxes Yet)

Holy cow! Where did the week go?

Sometimes when I’m struggling with a story (or multiple stories, let’s be real), it feels like days just drag by. This week has flown, though--and not just because I’m avoiding doing my taxes.

I don’t have anything super profound to say about this past week. Not that either of my other posts were profound, but sometimes I find myself trying to work out what the “moral of the story” is, or what the persuasive part of my argument is supposed to be. That’s just the storyteller and the student in me battling it out. I guess the big thing that stuck out to me this week is a video that I watched, and it kind of addressed what I was talking about last week:

Writer’s block and falling out of love with a story.

I’ll link the video here for anyone who’s interested. Trust me, if you’ve watched the web series Daisy Brown, then you’ll definitely want to watch this in its entirety: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pKli-bWZ10&ab_channel=JulesDapper

At one point in the video, Jules talks about what motivated her to keep creating videos for her Daisy Brown series, and that led into a piece of advice for content creators. I’m paraphrasing here, but essentially she said that creators should be aware of their motivations. If you’re motivated by getting a lot of views and making a lot of money (or in the case of writers, selling lots of books), then you’re going to have trouble finishing what you started.

And that hit me square in the uncomfortably personal part of my psyche.

After some self-analysis, I discovered the source of my writer’s block: my motivation for writing certain stories.

Why was it so easy to write these stories in the beginning, but became so difficult later in the process? It was because my motivation had shifted. In the beginning, I was motivated to write these books simply because they were fun, and they brought me joy. But later in the process, that wasn’t the case anymore. As soon as that stopped being true, I became motivated by the deadline.

Because these books are on my publisher’s schedule, I have to finish them. I’m committed. So, I asked myself: “If I hadn’t already promised that I would write these books, would I be trying to finish them right now?”

The answer was no.

That’s not to say that I would never finish writing them. It just means that I wouldn’t be pushing myself so hard. I would probably set these books aside for months, or even a year or two, before going back to them with renewed passion.

Jules goes on to say in the video that, as a creator, you have to be aware that other people might never see your work. Or it could be years before you find an audience. If you’re motivated by view/sales and money, then that waiting game is going to beat you. But if you’re motivated by a love for the story you’re telling, then quitting is going to feel impossible.

I know that feeling. The feeling that there’s a story inside of me that I cannot contain no matter how hard I try. It’s such a drastic change from that hair-pulling feeling of working for the deadline. For me, it’s not hard to tell the difference. But for some reason, I’ve never been very aware of how my motivation to write ebbs and flows between joy and a deadline.

I’ve almost finished all of the books that are already scheduled for publication sometime in the future. After that, I want to be more aware of my motivation. Hopefully, that will change my writing for the better.