I’m undertaking a 1000-day reinvention project, blogging here daily to track my progress. In Thursday Thinker, I share a smart idea or theory.
In his new memoir and writing guide Plot Twist: Life, Craft, and the Messy First Draft, novelist Harlan Coben writes that there are three things that “make a writer”:
The first is Inspiration…. You have to be inspired to write. You have to want to tell a story. You have to feel like you have something to say….
The second is Perspiration.… You have to do the grunt work of writing. You have to write. Really write. Just so we are clear: Only writing counts as writing….
[The] most important of the three, the one that separates the wannabes from the achievers, the unpublished from the published, the quitter from the finisher, is Desperation.
This formula sounds so easy, doesn’t it? And it resonates with me.
Yes, I think — all I need to do to succeed as a writer is to (1) feel regularly inspired around writing (2) actually write so much that I’m sweating over my writing and (3) desperately desire to make it work, and just to do it at all. That sounds pretty easy!
But is it?
I do feel inspired around writing, I think, I write every day! But I don’t focus enough to produce even a newsletter to share at this point, much less a novella or a nonfiction book.
I write, but not to the point of perspiration. I blog each morning here. I don’t break a metaphorical sweat doing it.
Yesterday I sweated at the gym. I did 20 minutes of a high-intensity interval training stair climber program. That didn’t make me sweat, but it got my heart rate up to 150 beats per minute. Then I got on my favorite exercise bike, the one that has rides with resistance that goes up and down to mimic hills and valleys. I was glad I’d brought a little towel with me for that one. I went hard up the hills and upped the gear to 18 or 20 on the downslopes.
On that last factor — desperation — the one Coben says is most important, he jokes that his desperation arises because “I am not fit to do anything else. Like hold a real job.” He writes:
I’m not good at much else. I have no marketable skill other than telling a story. I’m forgetful, disorganized, lethargic, unfocused, lazy. I couldn’t keep a real job. More than that, I don’t want a real job. I fear the very idea, and that fear, that fear that if I don’t write I’d have to get a real job—shiver—gets me back in the writing chair.
I can relate to this. I thought when I left my corporate technology job in April of 2024 that I’d take a bit of time off and then return to the workforce. But now I feel like I will never go back. I can’t. I’m unemployable at this point! I couldn’t imagine leaving my flexible lifestyle to do someone else’s bidding. I don’t want to work eight or more hours a day. Like Coben, I don’t want a real job!
So writing and portfolio management it is (with some painting thrown in too).
Fortunately, I don’t really need a real job. But I do feel desperate to prove myself as a writer. Long ago I had a book published but it wasn’t a book I wanted to write, or one I felt motivated to promote. I wrote it on a quick schedule and due to political machinations, it didn’t end up being my book alone. I always thought I’d write a book that I did feel proud of someday.
Maybe that day is coming soon.
Coben adds that it’s not just desperation around making a living that leads someone to write or otherwise create:
[Desperation] is that part of you that simply has to be a writer. You have to tell your story. You have to write things down. I gave the cute, self-deprecating answer, now here’s the overly earnest one. You are desperate to create. You are desperate to write or paint or build or compose. You are desperate because—and here I may go too far—you don’t want to live a life without it.
I do feel that kind of desperation. I can’t not write. I get up every morning happy that the first thing I’m going to do — after feeding the dogs and cats and making my bed — is write a blog post here.
I feel it around artmaking too. I’m always getting ideas for art pieces to make. Or I’m inspired by a call for entry. Yesterday I went to Goodwill to get ideas for a small piece I’m preparing for a community exhibition at the Denver Art Museum. I came home with some new thoughts and spent time experimenting with them at home, with real materials.
Coben’s formula feels simple, but it’s not, because there’s so much complexity underneath each of the three factors. With inspiration, I get scattered by too much of it. With perspiration, I’m probably not sweating enough. With desperation, I need to harness it. What am I desperate about with my writing? Simply to do it? To build an audience? To express myself authentically?
I imagine I’m going to be coming back to these questions again and again as I figure out what’s next for me as a writer.