A big warm hug, and one hard truth

Last weekend, I attended the Sorrento Writers Festival. It felt like one big, sprawling hug. But beneath all that inspiration, one hard truth kept punching me in the guts.

Author after author said, ‘The difference between writers and people who want to write is that writers write.’

Not talk about writing, though that remains one of my great spiritual gifts. Writers do the work. I know. Incredibly rude of them.

In a world heaving with hacks, shortcuts and shiny promises that you can have the thing without doing the thing, ‘do the work’ feels almost embarrassingly old-fashioned.

Annoyingly, I know it’s true.

A few years ago, I studied comedy. My classmates and I went to open mic nights together, and it was so much fun at first.

We even performed at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, which I mention only because it gives me street cred and lifelong bragging rights, both very serious matters.

Then we discovered comedy is gruelling hard work: writing new material, performing night after night in front of strangers, sometimes getting heckled or booed. Most of us drifted away.

Except for one graduate. She kept writing and performing. Today she is on radio, appears regularly on TV and recently headlined sold-out shows at the Comedy Festival. Bloody amazing!

I’m not saying that would have been my career, but please enjoy the image of me as the Beyoncé of the comedy circuit.

The difference wasn’t talent alone. It was that she kept doing the work consistently long after the fun part had worn off.

Doing the work is like kissing many, many frogs before you find your prince. Most days, there is no prince, just more frogs.

But the work is also where the beautiful stuff lives: the quiet satisfaction of getting better and the possibility of making something only you could have made.

So, this is gentle advice for you, and a stern talking-to for me.

Write the awkward first paragraph. Make the call you’ve been thinking about all week. Practise the speech before you feel ready.

Do the work.

And on that note, I’m going back to the next book I’m writing.

Book eight, apparently.

Did I just say that out loud? Now I suppose I have to keep going. Wish me luck!