Today is Sunday. After what was a warm and beautiful day yesterday, the weather has turned cold and grey. It seems that winter is not yet ready to let go of her grip on this part of Eastern Europe. How I long for the warmth and color of spring’s awakening. I guess I will have to wait a little longer for winter to be banished to the season to which she belongs.
Although there is much to appreciate about winter, I can’t say that I’ve enjoyed being forced back into the house with this sudden and unexpected cold snap. However, not all has been lost as I was able to catch up on a documentary about horse whisperer Gary Prince.
I checked out Gary on the Internet, but there was only a limited amount of information about him and his work. Nonetheless, what Gary had to say about horses and his connection with them got me thinking about my writing.
I’ve always loved animals, especially horses. As sophisticated as our society has become, there is still much that we can learn from the animal kingdom, not least how to connect with each other in a positive and meaningful way. And this was the point that Gary was trying to make during the documentary.
Gary’s unique connection with horses was born out of passion, a desire to connect with an animal of beauty and grace. Encouraged by his father, Gary learned how to ride at the age of three. Eventually, Gary’s natural riding ability took him into the competitive arena of horse dressage. It was here that he began to truly understand his gift of being able to communicate with horses. It came from within, a burning desire to be at one with a creature he had grown to love from a very early age. And herein is a lesson for all of us who are moved to become writers.
Passion, desire, connecting and understanding are words that all newbie writers should learn and comprehend before they set out on their writing career. All too often I come across newbie writers who enter the profession on the assumption that writing is a path to making money. It is not. Few, if any of us, ever reach the privileged position of earning a living from the articles or books we publish. At best, most of us can only hope to generate a little pocket change from the things we write about. So why do we write?
The reason why many of us write is that we have a passion and desire to connect with others. Just in the same way that Gary has a passion for connecting with horses, successful writers have a love for connecting with their audience.
If you are writing only to make money, then your audience will recognize that you are not in love with your chosen profession. They will quickly abandon you once they discover your writing lacks passion, much in the same way as a horse will throw its rider if the rider kicked it too hard with a set of sharp spurs!
Your success as a writer can never be measured in dollars or cents. It can only be measured by the number of people who actually read your material. It doesn’t matter whether you sell or you give away what you have written, the most essential part of writing must be your desire to connect with your readership.
Something magical occurs when you connect with others through your writing. That magic comes in the shape of an invisible bridge to your audience, a bridge that transcends space, time and place.
Ask yourself this question: Who are my favorite authors? The chances are that at least one of your favorite authors has long since passed on, leaving only their indelible thoughts to trickle down the passage way of time and into your hands. As a consequence, your favorite dead author’s success can never be measured by the sound of a cash register. They are simply no longer around to collect royalties or payment from their work.
The only way to measure a dead author’s success is by counting the number of people that their work has influenced since their demise. Many of the classic writers of the past knew this. However, their passion to communicate with others kept them at their desk long after their contemporaries had abandoned the writing profession from want of success through monetary gain. George Orwell’s ‘1984’ is a case in point.
When George Orwell wrote ‘1984’ he was dying, and he knew it. His motive for writing ‘1984’ had nothing to do with monetary gain but everything to do with communicating a message, a warning to audiences of the future about the perils of a totalitarian government . It is a message that continues to resonate with all freedom loving audiences of today. George Orwell was a writer with a passion to connect with others – a whisperer from the past still communicating with audiences long after his passing. Now that is what I call success!
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