Allow me to brag a little bit about my little sister, Kelli.
For well over a decade, Kelli has been writing professionally. Like me, she has done other things while being paid to write – as do many writers – but recently, her writing career has reached a point where she can reliably make her living solely from writing.
Kind of amazing. Right?
Kelli doesn’t write books or columns like me. Instead, she writes for businesses, almost exclusively online, and her writing is designed to improve a company’s SEO.
Honestly, I don’t entirely understand how her business words, but I know that these companies are paying her significant amounts of money to string words into sentences and sentences into paragraphs on many, many topics.
She’s writing. Professionally. Two honest-to-goodness professional writers in the family.
Mom would be so proud.
She passed away two years before my first book was published and well before Kelli launched her own writing career, which has always made me sad.
I’ve heard people say that dying is hardest on the living. Tell that to a mother who never got to see her children make their dreams come true.
When I asked Kelli how she managed to get to the point where she can make a living with words, her answer was perfect:
“So much patience and hard work.”
I meet many fledgling writers who adore the idea of sitting in a coffee shop mid-morning, coffee at the ready, pecking away at their masterpiece, but “patience” and “hard work” are not the words that these folks use when talking about writing.
But Kelli is right. Patience and hard work are essential.
I started writing back in November of 1988, and I have -without exaggeration – written every single day of my life since then. In high school, I opened a business writing term papers for my classmates, earning enough money to purchase my first car, a 1978 Chevy Malibu.
My first paid writing gig.
In 1990, I started writing a column on a localized bulletin board system: an early precursor to the Internet. My friend and roommate Bengi and I wrote a column entitled “He Said, He Said” for an audience numbering in the dozens.
When Bengi finally quit, I took over both sides of the column.
Over the years, I wrote in journals. I wrote letters. I wrote zines that I would send to people who didn’t ask for them. I wrote for the college newspapers of three different schools, including a college that I did not attend.
I wrote on my wedding day. I wrote on every day of my honeymoon. I wrote in the delivery room during the birth of both of my children. I wrote when I was homeless. The day I was jailed.
I wrote when I had pneumonia. Multiple times.
I’ve been writing this blog since October of 2005, never missing a single day.
Patience and hard work. Qualities that often strike me as in tragically short supply in many of the people who aspire to bigger and better things.
Not my sister, though.
Kelli went onto say:
“I never thought I could make a living doing this because I was always self-conscious about my work. I think I finally made it Matt! I have high paying clients and I’m so proud of myself for the first time ever.”
Also:
“Mike (her fiancé) tells me all the time how great it is that I’ve built this up from nothing, but he doesn’t understand how hard its been to finally get here. For me it’s such a huge accomplishment!”
Two things struck me from those statements:
For a long time, my sister was self-conscious about her work. It caused her to doubt herself. For a while, it may have even held her back.
Patience and hard work become even harder when you doubt your skill and talent. I had the blessing of self-confidence bordering on arrogance.
Maybe even arrogance bordering on self confidence. I wasn’t sure if anyone else would ever like my work, but I liked it and thought it was good, so if others disagreed, they were the problem.
Not me.
My sister’s journey – and the journey of many artists – was made much harder by the creeping challenge of doubt. The lack of self-confidence. The uncertainty over whether her work was good.
It’s also true that our friends and loved ones can talk about being proud or even impressed with our success – and it’s always a wondrous thing to hear – but when it comes to something as solitary as writing, it’s hard to imagine anyone understanding how hard it really was. They can’t see the thousands of hours spent writing and editing and revising. The millions of words written and many millions more deleted in the process of finding the right ones. The struggle to find meaning and humor and engagement in words.
My little sister has done a very big thing. She, too, struggled mightily at many points in her life. A teenage mother who, like me, also struggled with homelessness, poverty, and a car accident that nearly left her dead. Like me, no one even mentioned to word “college” to her growing up.
No one encouraged her to chase her dreams.
Her path was not easy. In fact, it was considerably harder than mine.
Today she is a professional writer. She has made her dream come true. For the first time in her life, she is proud of herself.
I’ve been proud of her for far longer than that.
She’s come a long, long way.
