When you’re in any creative business doing what you love and are passionate about the obstacles are endless and it can be tough to persist. In this A to Z Challenge post on the letter K I want to talk with you about knowledge.
Knowing who you are and what you want to do is the very first challenge you’ll face. Not knowing this truth about yourself is detrimental to ensuring you’re on the right journey and rejoicing when you reach your destination. There are plenty of personality quizzes out there as well as tests to help you find a job you’re skilled at and I’ve found a few helping to clarify who you are (see Oprah’s quiz and the one at Clarity by Fire) but are they enough?
Reading a lot of self-help and motivational blog posts and books I believe it can be much easier than taking multiple quizzes, then again I have always known writing is what I loved to do so finding my passion just wasn’t necessary. What I never really knew though is how and that’s another thing we’re told not to fret about.
Taking small steps and focusing on finding time to do what you love the most every day, despite all other obligations, takes care of the why. The how is said to magically unfold before us if we do the other things right. For impatient people like me, this can be the most aggravating part of it all.
And for writers, and I guess all creators, writing what we know is often said to be the key to success. Another point I struggle with as when I wrote Blood Day the Short Story I honestly didn’t know what I was doing. I typically write fiction but this was closer to science fiction, something I’ve avoided at most costs. When it won first prize in a provincial contest it made me doubt the idea of writing what we know being the best plan.
Learning about a topic or diving into the unknown is a wonderful aspect of writing fiction that yes, does take time but the more you know the better you can prepare yourself with not knowing the how. You’re too busy to wonder about that anyway.
So I want to know, do you know your passion and do you focus on creating more of what you know or do you learn along the way?
Thanks for reading,
Sarah Butland
author of Arm Farm, Blood Day the Novella, Life Imitated and more!