Work Ethic Matters
Talent alone won’t get you very far
Here’s the bottom line upfront: if you’re a writer, you probably aren’t working hard enough. If you’re one of the rare few who are, you probably still aren’t. I am nowhere close to putting in the work required to make this writing thing work for me.
My grandfather, he of the Greatest Generation, was your typical gruff, grizzled World War II veteran. His stories of walking barefooted uphill (both ways!) in feet of snow to get to a one-room schoolhouse were obviously exaggerated. Arkansas has never gotten that much snow, and I‘m pretty sure he didn’t graduate high school anyway. What wasn’t exaggerated, though, was the work he had to put in as a child to help feed his family. I asked my dad once why he did that.
“He didn’t eat if he didn’t work,” he stated simply.
My grandfather didn’t have the luxury as a child of exploring his space and discovering his unique gifts and passions. He didn’t have time to show the world what he was made of and how much it should appreciate him. I, however, grew up in a very different world. Likely, so did you.
I follow and read some exceedingly gifted writers on here. Many of them have articles to the effect of “How I made $$$$$$$$ in my first 20 minutes on Medium!” I don’t have any such articles in my repertoire, and the reason for that is simple. I haven’t made more than like 30 bucks in any given month I’ve ever written on Medium. The people who do have those articles generally have one thing in common: they write daily (and many of them more than once a day).
Okay. Stop for a second. Before you load up the “You should never write for the money!” torpedoes, let me just say that I’ve already said here that you should write for the love of the art. Having said that…
Recognition for artistic expression is important. On Medium, that comes in the form of claps, interaction with the posts, and…yep. Money. In case you’ve been living under a rock lately, the money part of that recognition has radically changed just this week. No longer will you be paid for claps; people have to actually read your stuff (and hopefully read it carefully) now. The time they spend with your story is what determines tangible reward under the new model. Here’s the truth, though. If we want people to spend more time reading and interacting with our stuff, we probably should spend more time crafting it. Putting in the work.
Talent is important, and I will never say differently. However, talent without work ethic is like a modern kitchen with no cook. All the pieces are in place, but food doesn’t cook itself. The time we spend writing obviously determines both the quantity and the quality of individual pieces, but it also hones that quality. No superstar athlete ever said, “You know, the less time I spend in the gym, the better I am at my sport.”
Get in the writing gym. Crank out product. Read other peoples’ products. Learn. Grow. Interact. Whatever you do, write. After all. If you don’t write, you don’t eat. Figuratively speaking, of course.
Frank Vaughn is an award-winning writer and photographer (don’t ask me how), husband, father, and military veteran from Little Rock, Ark. He likes puppies, Netflix, and Rocky Road ice cream.
