JH Lillevik

What are you willing to sacrifice to achieve your dreams and make a living writing? This is a question that I think every aspiring writer needs to ask themselves.

As I am writing this, I am on 3 hours of sleep. I woke up from a dream that slowly developed into an imagined conversation with my aunt and uncle who are, like me and most other people, both very concerned with the environment. The thing is that as someone who has always been concerned about the environment, I have never thought about this one question enough. In the dream and then the imagined conversation, I kept on asking them: What are you willing to sacrifice?

We all do this. It might not be clear at the time, but every choice you make is a sacrifice of something else. Should you take that donut or should you choose a healthier snack, because as of late you have felt a little groggy? The choices we make are what sets down a path.

I have made some choices in life where I have had to give up on something that may have given me some short-term pleasure or someone who meant a great deal to me. Writing can be a very lonely profession and not everyone might understand the drive to have to write something or having some question that haunts you so much that you get up at 5 am just to write an article about it.

This is why I think I was vexed by that question. What are you willing to give up? I do believe many writers have asked themselves that question and come up with the answer: everything. And it is necessary to make those sacrifices in every part of life. Especially if you have something that burns so deeply in your mind that you cannot let it go.