22 Feb

Be in love with what you do

It’s a lazy Sunday, and I’ve been having a good old read.

I’m reading a classic that I’ve read before – Grapes of Wrath;
a) because I like it: a fantastic story, well told.
b) John Steinbeck was an incredible writer.
c) it makes me feel all intellectual and arty to read the book… and tell others that I’m reading it.

There’s another reason I’m reading it: it is a thing of beauty. It’s prose that slips into poetry. Every paragraph, every sentence, is so wonderfully descriptive, and uses language that I wish I had in my armoury. In fact, I read this book to learn from its style (not that you can really use it in modern day copy or content).

Take a look at this (clearer if you click on it):

Grapes

‘The families moved lazily to their sleep, yawning luxuriously’

‘… the field mice grew bold and scampered about among the mattresses.’

It’s beautiful, and not a single word is wasted: I know exactly what that scene looks like.

The point is, I love words. I cannot switch off from them.
Whether they come in the form of poetry, prose, a stage script, a TV script, a newspaper article, a press ad … I pore over words. I hold onto them. I play with them in my mind, constantly.

I’ve loved words since I was little. I was fascinated by them – what you could do with them, how you could make other people feel through your use of them – from the off.
If I was average or crap at any other school subject, my work in English classes propped me up… because it was never work: it was fun.

My dream was to get paid to write – to find myself in a position where it’s unbelievable for people to pay me money for doing something I love: instead of something that’s a chore (because that’s what most work is supposed to feel like, right?)

I do what I do because I love – no, I’m obsessed with words.

Whatever I do, and whatever route I take, I will always be working with words. Doing anything else would just kill me.

Be in love with what you do. It’s the quickest way to end up being good at it.

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