Dylan asked Nicholas Eames:

Hi Nicholas, as an aspiring writer myself, I wanted to ask how you stayed motivated as a writer for as long as you did? You've been quite open about just how long the writing process took you and how you were often rejected and even had to abandon your first story before KOTW, so I was wondering how you stayed motivated to keep going with writing and what you did when you felt discouraged to keep going?

Nicholas Eames Hi!

Yeah, it can definitely be a slog. It was very much was for me, but I was also extremely happy with my life regardless of whether or not I got published. I loved working in restaurants, and I didn't write if I didn't feel like it (although I felt like writing a lot, thankfully).

I didn't know when starting out how difficult it was to get published, and until it WAS published I really had no clue as to how much authors made. In the end, while I worked really hard, I also got pretty lucky, finding exactly the right agent and editor along the way.

If I had to do it all over again I would probably not put SOOOOO many eggs in the writing basket, and would have pursued a career in, say, making video games while I wrote on the side. Most published authors (about 95%) don't survive off writing alone and have another job that sustains them financially, so I think it's important to have as strong a foundation as possible while you pursue the dream.

So while I DID feel discourage sometimes, I was writing for the joy of it, and I think I learned a lot about myself in the process. I don't think time spent writing and creating is ever wasted.

And if the dream DOES comes true, then I can say for sure that there's few things so rewarding as hearing that someone loved your work, or was affected by it, or that it helped them cope with something in their lives that might have been harder otherwise. Things like that make any slog, no matter how long, feel worthwhile.

Good luck, Dylan!

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