You Should Love What You Do But that Won’t Make it Easy

I try never to shy away from big topics when they come up on stream. Especially where the craft of writing is involved. The more we talk about our processes and our struggles, the easier it is for new writers to find their feet and gain their balance.

I certainly wish I had a forum for those kinds of discussions when I first started out.

Lately, I’ve been asked a lot of similar questions. Things like, how do you keep going when you lose the honeymoon spark that first draws you to an idea? How do you stay focused on something for years at a time? What happens if you never feel the same excitement as you did in the beginning ever again? And how do you stay devoted to one idea when dozens of other shiny new ones vie for your attention?

These are all difficult questions to answer – mostly because they first require that we acknowledge writing is a highly individual process. It mostly involves finding what pleases your specific brain chemistry and keeps it on target. That means that what works for me and my brain might not necessarily work for you and yours, even though the only experience I can really speak to is my own.

I hate feeling like I can’t give my friends and viewers the information they’re looking for. Especially since one of the main reasons I stream is to answer people’s questions about the writing process. But while everyone’s millage may vary when it comes to these kinds of conversations, they still feel important to tackle.

Because the fact is that writing is hard, and there’s not much you can do to change that.

How to Stay Invested

For me, staying interested in something for years on end isn’t a problem. Because even when I’m not working on a project, my brain screams at me about it. I’m constantly delving into the depths of the ideas lurking in the back of my mind and discovering new details about them. And every time that happens, it sort of re-ignites the spark.

I like to joke that my characters will yell at me if I don’t pay enough attention to them. That’s certainly how it feels from my perspective. But the truth is that not all of my characters are equally vocal. Sometimes I have to prod an idea quite a lot before it speaks to me. And there are honestly times when it’s really difficult, when I feel like I end up with massive gaps in a concept that I’m not sure how to fill in.

And because my brain doesn’t always provide sparks of inspiration for my current project (it likes to skip around), it can be dreadfully difficult not to rush off and start writing something that isn’t what I’ve chosen for one of my current project slots. Just because I write new ideas down and file them away for later doesn’t mean they exit my awareness and leave me in peace. Far from it!

But through years of practice, I have found a system that works for me with a fair amount of consistency. It mostly involves a regular writing routine and a fair amount of personal discipline, but it gets me where I need to go.

That might offer an observer the impression that what I do is relatively easy for me, that none of the big questions from the opening of this post really trouble me. But that couldn’t be farther from the truth.

The Fear Never Goes Away

I sincerely wish I could say that writing eventually gets easier. And in some ways it does. You learn how to tackle grammar and sentence structure with repetition. You learn how to instinctively balance the pace of a plot or adjust for elements you missed during your rough draft.

But in some of the harshest ways, writing never really gets easier. And that’s a hard truth to swallow.

Because all creative processes are a cycle, you will eventually hit a point where your sense of how writing should be done is better than your current skill level. And that disconnect will convince you that you don’t know what you’re doing.

There will be days when writing feels like work. And on those days you need to sit down and push through the obstacles to keep your progress steady. Obviously, if you’re in need of rest or skirting burnout, then a break is warranted. But there will be days when you need to force yourself to stay on task. And that won’t always feel nice even after you get the work done.

There will be days when you hate every word you write. There will be days when you just can’t get a scene to work the way you want it to. Some days you may even question if anything you’ve done is worth all the blood, sweat and tears you’ve put into it. You’ll consider ripping the whole manuscript up, deleting it off your hard drive and never acknowledging it ever existed.

I wish I could say those feelings go away. That you eventually rise above the fear and prance forward without hindrance.

But that would be a lie. I’ve written more than 40 books – and there are still times I feel all of these things.

Passion Doesn’t Erase the Need to Work

An idiom popped up on our discord a few days before I wrote this post: love what you do and you’ll never work a day in your life.

I get the sentiment. And it would be nice if everyone got a chance to work according to their passions. I think that would make the world a better place.

But no matter how much you love the thing you do, there are going to be days when it feels hard. There will be times you want to throw your arms in the air and give up. On those days, everything else will seem easier than the path you chose. And this is especially true with creativity because everyone has slumps.

In July, I typically sit down to do a rapid, late-pass edit on whatever big project has just come back from my beta readers. Usually, I look at my manuscript and try to break it down into the smallest time frame I can reasonably tackle all the work without the quality suffering. I’m always hoping to get through these passes in 3 – 4 weeks.

For something I spent 6 months writing and likely another 6 months editing.

There are many reasons I try to condense the work. One is so that it’s just plain easier to keep track of everything that’s happened. Another is that the manuscript is usually polished enough to not need a ton of attention. And the third is that I’m just trying to fit it into my schedule as compactly as possible.

During these edits, I don’t work on secondary projects. And usually I breeze through the polishing process.

Not this year.

Do the Work Anyway

I’m not sure what happened to my brain in the middle of 2025. I’m not sure if health issues or the hustle and bustle of life made it more difficult to focus than usual. It could have been the sheer density of the schedule. (I’m certainly keeping that in mind for next year). Or it could have been that my style underwent some changes when I wrote this particular trilogy.

Whatever the case, my polishing pass was truly miserable this year. Everything I read felt horribly disjointed, which forced me to re-read most of it. And in order to do that, I had to walk away from my computer, put myself in a comfortable and cozy environment and listen to a whole lot of rain noises.

After a month of those struggles, I actually considered giving up. For the first time in a long time, I asked myself why I’m still doing this thing when it seemed like the major climax of a series I had slaved over for years felt miles away from where it should be. And this was while my betas reassured me repeatedly that they had found only minor issues with the books.

Sometimes writing is just hard. Some days the thing you love most is going to feel like work. Really terrible hard work that you hate.

This is the part of the post where I wish I could say it gets easier to deal with. And maybe it does. You find ways. In this case, I parked myself on the couch and tried to imagine I was reading for pleasure, and that mostly worked.

But at the end of the day, sometimes you just have to buckle down and endure the bad. Even perusing our passions doesn’t provide a perfect paradise.

Hopefully knowing that will at least reassure you on the bad days that you’re not doing it wrong. Because there is no magical solution to the fear and struggle. You just kind of have to live with it.