The Repeaters by W.H. Abdelgawad
By Wael Abdelgawad | WaelAbdelgawad.com
It’s easy to write – or pursue any passion, really, whether it’s art, music, advanced studies or entrepreneurship – when you are single, childless, or unemployed. But can you do it when you are a full-time college student and working a job to survive? When you’re married with children? When you have a high pressure career? If so, then you are a true writer my friend, and you will one day be a published author.
You have to want it. In fact, you must be obsessed with writing. You must burn with the desire and need to write. If you’re a fiction writer, you must have ideas, characters and scenes running riot in your head, demanding to be let out. You must be willing to sacrifice, work, learn, and suffer disappointment and rejection along the way.
Either that, or you must have a lot of free time on your hands and be willing to write merely for your own sake, as an expression of your personality and creativity.
Writing The Repeaters took a year of my life and significant financial sacrifices. So far it has not paid off. Yet here I am, getting ready to start volume two in the series. Could this be defined as a kind of insanity? Is it foolishness? Welcome to the world of the writer.
If you’re not burning with the need to write a novel – or play, biography or non-fiction book – and you’re not retired and sitting in a beach house with a typewriter, a view of the ocean and time to kill, then my suggestion is that you find something else to do besides write. Life is full of fun, exciting and meaningful pursuits.
Why do I say this? Because writing is difficult, time-consuming, and pays little. For every Stephen King and Janet Evanovich, there are a million good writers toiling in anonymity and poverty – or even in relative fame and poverty! There’s absolutely no reason to pursue a career as a writer unless you are simply driven to it by your heart and soul.