In a new blog post, Chuck Wendig offers a simple New Year’s resolution: “Be vigorous in your defense of your work.”
This doesn’t mean defend yourself against your critique partners or online reviewers, he says. Instead, it concerns everyone else. “As a writer, everyone wants a piece of you,” Wendig says. “They treat the act of writing as an unserious endeavor, failing to see it as the result of the three corners of art, craft and work.” We know differently, but many act like they don’t and they treat you unseriously as a result.
“I think there’s a very real threat against writers that comes from all directions,” Wendig writes. People make demands of your time. Some see you as competition. Others want you to write the book they want to read, instead of the one only you can and should write. “So, I think this is a good year to dig in your heels a little,” Wendig says.
Find the time to write. Create a physical space for it. Stop killing your darlings and rush the hill. “I hope your 2023 is a good one, a productive one, and one where you make a stand for the stories you want to tell,” Wendig says. “We only get one good turn on this carousel, so make it count.”
