Stop Suffering for Your Art

One of the most ubiquitous social media posts from romance fiction writers goes something like this: “It’s deadline week…family has eaten takeout for fourteen days straight. I haven’t seen the kids since last Monday, and haven’t showered in three days, but can’t stop now. Forty-eight hours left and twenty-five thousand words to write.” I know about those posts in part because I’ve made them. For five years I worked fifty plus hours a week, and wrote two dozen plus books.

Let me give a disclaimer: This is not an article about writing fast or writing slow or publishing two books a year or ten. Artists should produce whatever they’re comfortable producing, whatever works for them. One painting annually or six, a sculpture every third year, or a book a month. That’s between you and your muse. But what you shouldn’t be doing is buying into the nonsense that you have to suffer for your art.

To be successful at anything we have to work hard. Sometimes hard work necessitates temporary sacrifice, and that’s fine. An all-nighter to prepare an important presentation, a month of long hours during a product launch, those…