Work

I don't know many people who love what they do. They spend the majority of their waking hours waiting for quitting time, only to spend those hours dreading their return to hell. There's a reason it's called work...it's not fun!

I know. I've been there.

It's drudgery. A chore.

So in those rare instances when we find--and pursue--our true calling, the "work" label no longer seems to fit. But since we're not in misery, we too often feel that we're not doing enough. If we were, then it wouldn't--it couldn't--be so enjoyable.

What kind of twisted thinking is that, anyway?

Why do we think, if it doesn't feel like "work," that we're not actually accomplishing something?Why do we feel, when we love what we do, that we should be doing something else?
And in our writing, why do we feel, just because a certain type of writing comes easily to us, that it's not worthy of our primary focus? That we should be writing something else?

It just doesn't make sense, though I understand where it comes from.

We are surrounded by people who are unhappy with a good portion of their days. And here we are, many of us at-home Moms, grateful that we can stay home with our children and do the one thing we are passionate about: write. Some of us earn a living at it, some of us don't (yet). For those of us that don't, we are made to feel guilty about the time we spend with our notebooks or at our computers. We lower writing on our list of priorities because the non-writers around us just don't get it. If we enjoy our writing so much, and if we'd rather do something writing-related instead of watching TV or going to bed, then it must be a hobby. By definition, it can't be work. And while we're at it, what gives us the right to even think of calling it "our work?" Who do we really think we are?

What they don't understand is that good writing takes practice. It takes all kinds of writing to improve our craft, including emails and blogs. What to the non-writer seems like a waste of time is, to a writer, yet another way to test all the ways in which our words can come together to tell the story we want to tell.

No writing is a waste of time. And even the writing that comes most naturally to us, be it essays, poems or science fiction stories, can be a struggle when the words don't come together quite as we planned. But to think we are working on the wrong type of writing because we think we don't struggle enough is just insane.

All writing is work. But WE have to learn to value the time and effort we put into our work or no one else will either.

And if we writers just happen to have fun and love what we do, then so be it. We're one of the few who have found what we were put on Earth to do. Consider it a blessing.

Maybe those who love us will eventally see it that way, too.