I love this podcast Plz Advise by Molls McAleer. I listen to it on my iPhone on the podcast app but you can also listen via Soundcloud. Molls has loads of different guests on each week and I find it funny, and pretty blunt in places. This one (it’s from last year) is one of my favourites, featuring another writer I love Ryan O’Connell.
The question was:
“Hey, I’ve been writing for some years now but I can’t sit myself down and write a short story or even a book. What advice and/or tips would you give to another writer struggling with a lack of motivation. What is your process for writing? How did you get your opportunities to write for TV [Two Broke Girls]?”
The straight-up answers are below. Warning: Not for the faint-hearted.
– Molls says:
“I’ve answered this question a million times. I f*cking wrote and wrote and I wrote and wrote. If you have no motivation to write then, no offence, this might not be the career for you. Writing is something that needs to come out of you and even if it sucks at first, you wake up every morning with the urge to take your little fingers and stroke some across a keypad and make f*cking words, and then make some paragraphs, and then eventually, they get good. I don’t know where it comes from. This is no answer. The answer is, you have to really want it.
– Ryan says:
“That’s exactly it, you have to really want it. And spoiler alert: not many people want it. Or, they don’t want it as much as they should. When I worked at Thought Catalog and had relationships with a lot of the freelancers and they’d be like “how can I get my career to go further” and I’d be like: “you could start writing?” There are so many people out there who call themselves writers, and they don’t.fucking.write. They’ll do ONE blog post and be like “Oh I finally did it!” You learn if you write every single day.
– Molls says:
“What led up to me working for 2 Broke Girls was me hustling, writing, and networking and meeting people and connecting with others I admire. I’d ask myself, how can I be involved? Get involved.
– Ryan says:
“Sorry to be like “way harsh Tai” but it sounds like you don’t want it enough. I can’t relate when you say you don’t have the motivation. My motivation was I wanted it. That’s it. That’s the motivation.”
Listen to full the podcast HERE //Subscribe to Plz Advise HERE.
