O is for Obsession

OBSESSION

“One hasn't become a writer until one has distilled writing into a habit, and that habit has been forced into an obsession. Writing has to be an obsession. It has to be something as organic,physiological and psychological as speaking or sleeping or eating.” -Niyi Osundare

What are you obsessed with? What do you think about all the time? What could you never get sick of learning about?

Use it for a story--or if you've got the stamina, a novel. 

“All good research-whether for science or for a book-is a form of obsession.” 
― Mary Roach

Are you obsessed with writing? If you are, good. To make it in this business, to find happiness in this profession, you will need that obsession to fuel you soul when times are tough, when you think that no one cares, when the easiest thing in the world would be to quit.

Except. You can't quit. Writing is (almost) everything to you. Right? If not, you wouldn't still be here.

So write away. Embrace that obsession. Make it work for you, rather than against you.

But don't lose track of the important things. And by important, I mean family, first and foremost. But also gratitude for every day that we have on this earth, because every day is a gift, even when it doesn't feel like it. 

Now go back to whatever you were obsessing over before you stopped to read this. :-)

one of my obsessions

 “I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed and that necessary.” 
-Margaret Atwood

“You become what you think about all day long.” 
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Color is my daylong obsession, joy, and torment.” 
-Claude Monet