Tom Limoncelli Whines A Lot
4th May 2013
Read it. Or don’t.
As an author, and one that is currently living on unemployment insurance payments, DRM-free scares the shit out of me. Every book I’ve ever published has been pirated. Some I have even found in the “/tmp” directory of open HTTP servers. Every time I see my books pirated I die a little inside.
So get a real job. There’s no law that says you have to be a writer.
Writing is very difficult for me. People don’t realize how hard it is. How do I stop procrastinating and sit down to write? I eliminate everything else “tempting” from my life for a year or two until the book is done. Do you know what’s more tempting to do than writing? Everything. This basically means anything fun… eliminated. It kills my nights and weekends. It kills my social life. I say “no” to every invitation, movie night, gaming night, etc. When the book is done I always hold a big party to celebrate but also to re-introduce myself to my friends and loved ones that I’ve haven’t seen in so long.
If you hate it so much, why do it? There’s no law that says you have to be a writer. I’d advise you to get into an un’piratable’ line of work. Plumbing, say. Or maybe carpentry.
So what if you really really really want to be a writer? Write! Doesn’t mean you are somehow entitled to make a living at it. I’d dearly love to be able to make a living as a teacher, too, but it doesn’t pay shit, so I don’t do that as my day job. I’m sure the guy who quit working in order to get a degree in Puppetry, for which there is no apparent commercial demand, feels just as pregnant as you do. But you’ll both have to get over it, or starve.