“One person with passion is better than forty people merely interested.”
E.M. Forster
“One should never creep when one feels the impulse to soar.”
Helen Keller
“You can have anything you want – if you want it badly enough. You can be anything you want to be, have anything you desire, accomplish anything you set out to accomplish – if you will hold to that desire with singleness of purpose.”
Robert E. Lee
Passion is one of those “buzz” words that people seem to use a lot these days. Webster’s defines it as an “intense, driving, overmastering feeling or conviction. Here are a few synonyms: fervor, ardor, enthusiasm, zeal.
In an ideal world, we’d bring passion to the page all the time. Whenever we sit down to write, we’d feel excited, enthusiastic, zealous, and creative. We’d tackle our words and paragraphs with zest and zip. The warm glow of our ardor would leap from the page and kindle a kindred glow within our readers.
Whoops! That’s castle in the sky stuff. Sustaining passion over the long haul is tough. Some days, it’s hard to pull it from our kit bag. What to do, what to do?
Here’s some advice from my good friend and mentor, Rob Gilbert’s Success Hotline (973.743.4690): “Put out the effort and the attitude of a superstar. You’ll amaze yourself!”
When you’re not feeling passionate and enthusiastic, there’s a simple solution: Act as if. Fake it ’till you feel it. That’s right: Act as if you’re a superstar writer and pretty soon you’ll begin feeling like one. To succeed, we need to be passionate players, regardless of the mood we’re in. So let’s act our way into it if we have to. And write on!