The Writers' Lottery

Every morning on my way into the office, I drive past a billboard advertising the amount of the jackpot for the upcoming weekend's state lottery drawing. The amount ranges from three million dollars to eighty million dollars, depending on how many weeks the jackpot has rolled over with no winner.

Every morning I see that billboard and think, "What would I do with -x- million dollars?" I slip into that daydreamy state we all enter when contemplating how different our lives would be if we were suddenly in possession of such a large sum of money.

When I mentioned this to a friend, she jokingly commented on how much better her chances for winning the lottery would be if she actually bought a ticket. Upon hearing this, my mind automatically made the connection to writing.

Writing is like the lottery.

We all call ourselves writers. It's a title most wear proudly, but for others it evokes a certain amount of cringing and self-loathing. Why? Because we call ourselves writers while secretly hating ourselves for not writing often enough. Because we call ourselves writers while kicking ourselves for not producing as many pages as we'd like to produce. Because there are times when we go days on end without writing a word, and because we feel unworthy when we don't meet our own personal standards for what qualifies a person for the illustrious title of Writer.

We've all been there, in that halfway spot where "writing" and "rest-of-life" meet for a knock-down drag-out battle and "rest-of-life" wins, leaving "writing" hunched in the corner, waiting not-so-patiently until the time comes for a rematch and the odds are more in its favor. It waits, and waits, until finally the muse pounds so hard in your head you can't hear anything else, or until the bills are all paid or the kids are visiting the grandparents and a quiet empty house miraculously coincides with a few hours of free time.

We all have lives. We all have obligations. Some of us have spouses or significant others, some have kids, and some have jobs that unfortunately may not involve writing (a fact which probably pains us each and every day). More often than not, life gets in the way of writing.

So how do we end the self-loathing and take on the title of Writer with pride? We write. We begin to do what is necessary to live up to our own standards for what makes a writer a Writer. We find time. We make time, because for writers who really truly are Writers, the muse never stops hounding us and we never stop giving in.

Just like my friend said, you can't win the lottery without buying a ticket, and you can't sell a book or screenplay without first writing it. So get writing!

© Kris Cramer. All rights reserved.
Reprinted here with the author's permission.

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