When aspiring authors ask writing coaches and successful creatives advice on how to get motivated and break through blocks, the response is inevitably the inspiring reassurance:
“The world needs your book.”
This is, of course, not just a platitude, but straight-up bullshit.
The world doesn’t need your book. The world has enough books.
Think of the people you know. I’ll bet most of them are insanely busy, and when given a rare moment of relaxation, they would almost certainly prefer to scroll through their Facebook feed rather than to pick-up a new book from a debut author.
There is enough writing out there to meet the (ever-dwindling) demand; more than enough – we are drowning in content.
Why, then, do people continue to write and publish?
What allows them to break through blocks and stick with it for the long hall?
I assure you, it’s not because they have some secret hack for getting motivated to write. Rather, they write because they are compelled to write; they write because they can’t NOT write.
I didn’t write this article because I was “motivated” to write it. I didn’t write it because “the world needs it.” I wrote it because it was burning up inside of me and I had to get it out. If you don’t have a similar unquenchable desire to create burning within you, then you probably shouldn’t create. Put down the pen, walk away.
The punk rock band Rancid has written hundreds of songs, released nine studio albums, and toured for three decades. Their song “Black Derby Jacket,” addresses the topic of creating and touring with the following lyrics:
Six weeks on and ten days off
Then I go back on the road for another show
This is all that I’ve ever done
Girl, I got nothing to fall back on
Rancid isn’t continuing to put out new albums because the world “needs more Rancid albums.” They are doing it because it’s all they have ever done.
Having nothing to fall back on is pretty great motivation for creating art.
NOFX, another seminal, prolific, and long-performing punk rock band, explain why they continue to produce art in their song “60%”:
This isn’t my job, my hobby, my habit… this is my life
“This is my life.”
Can you say the same thing about your artistic output?
Indie author Derek Murphy has been able to write and publish a significant amount of fiction in the last couple of years.
Why?
The fact that he has a “#amwriting” tattoo might give you a hint to the answer.
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Junot Diaz puts it like this:
“In my view a writer is a writer not because she writes well and easily, because she has amazing talent, because everything she does is golden. In my view a writer is a writer because even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway.”
You’re kidding yourself if you think your writing is a charity act intended to address the needs of the world.
The world doesn’t need your book.
YOU need your book.
That’s why you should write it.
Screw the world. Do it for yourself.
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