Great advice from Neil Gaiman on how to think about what you want
Sometimes the way to do what you hope to do will be clear-cut, and sometimes it will be almost impossible to decide whether or not you are doing the correct thing, because you’ll have to balance your goals and hopes with feeding yourself, paying debts, finding work, settling for what you can get.
Something that worked for me was imagining that where I wanted to be – an author, primarily of fiction, making good books, making good comics and supporting myself through my words – was a mountain. A distant mountain. My goal.
And I knew that as long as I kept walking towards the mountain I would be all right. And when I truly was not sure what to do, I could stop, and think about whether it was taking me towards or away from the mountain. I said no to editorial jobs on magazines, proper jobs that would have paid proper money because I knew that, attractive though they were, for me they would have been walking away from the mountain. And if those job offers had come along earlier I might have taken them, because they still would have been closer to the mountain than I was at the time.
You should read the whole thing.
Sometimes in working out what we want, the choice is marginal, a close call. Thinking of your endpoint as a mountain in the distance is really helpful Will this choice I’m facing move me closer to the mountain?
Thanks Neil
PS – Know and Go is now out for Kindle – Check it out
