​INTRODUCTION               
Wanting to be a writer blows.  Wanting to be any type of artist sucks.  There is this little, nagging need that some force of nature inserted into you, and it gives you this nigh-impossible benchmark for success that you will always aim for, rarely achieve, and continually compare yourself against.  It’s no way to live a life.  I love writing, and at gunpoint, I’d never give it up, but every once in a while, I’ll quietly wish that I could be happy doing anything else.
 
Probably the unhappiest part of being an artist is the gradual acceptance that you are going to need to get a job.  If you want to live a life of any sort of comfort, you need to pay the bills, and seeing as it’s not the 80s anymore, you can’t survive off the odd magazine article or dive-bar gig.  So the question becomes: how do I keep the dream alive while the realities of life are tearing me down?  Outside of bourbon, I’m going to go into a few ways to get after it.  The methods may not be groundbreaking, but let me try and explain them in a way that will finally get through to you.     
 
REALISTIC WRITING GOALS
I hear this little tidbit a lot.  It’s a mainstay of every blog post I’ve seen that tries to help out the struggling writer.  It is absolutely true.  A writer needs to work with what they’ve got.  We’d all love to tackle our stories for four hours a day, Stephen King style, but for most of us, that’s just not realistic.  If you only have an hour a day to scribble something down, then you need to adjust your expectations.  Knocking out a paragraph in a day is always better than knocking out nothing. 
 
What people don’t address about this piece of truth, however, is that it fucking sucks.  This piece of advice suggests a realistic concept to a group of people with an unrealistic goal.  We have a dream, we want to write books, and we want to be famous for a medium that fewer and fewer people are 

First, Dark Psychology is just Being a Dick for Dummies.  Remember, anything that says it is the “science and art” of anything is just bullshit.  Dark Psychology is just a selling point for people who never had the space or charisma to be a douchebag.  And if you’re still needing to express how you’re an asshole after your twenties, you need to see a counselor, not buy that book.

Anyway, I was reading a new book, lately, I finished it, and I almost gave up on the author.  And that killed me.  I absolutely loved the writing, the setting, everything, right up until the end.  The author did that Shutter Island thing where it was in the main character’s head the whole time.  That drives me crazy.  It was cool and amazing the first time an author did it, but now, you’ve literally just wasted my time.  I spent a book’s worth of time being drawn into this world, and then at the last second you go, “Just kidding!” 

It’s not clever anymore.  It is just insulting.