How To Find Your Passion And Channel It Into Your Writing

The theme for February is from peace to passion and start off this blog, I found a quote online about passion which I resonated with, taken from ‘Dear John’ by Nicholas Sparks:
“The saddest people I’ve ever met in life are the ones who don’t care deeply about anything at all. Passion and satisfaction go hand in hand, and without them, any happiness is only temporary, because there’s nothing to make it last.”

This got me thinking… what is my passion? I’ve always found that a difficult question to answer, and it usually comes in the form of ‘What do you want to do after you graduate from university?’ Well I’ve graduated and I’m still not entirely sure!

For me, I can’t imagine it being something work-related, but I am very fond of dancing, and have done so since I was a child. It’s something I’m good at, it’s a great way to socialise and when I’m there nothing else going on in my life seems that important – it’s a brilliant stress buster. But would I go as far to say I was passionate about dancing? I’m not so sure.

For others of you who may be in the same position as me, and are struggling to find your passion, I’ve summarised the 5 steps it appears you need to go through in order to find what makes you tick.

How to find your passion and channel this into your writing:

1. Understand yourself. Sounds a little bit corny I know but it actually kind of makes sense, especially for a writer. If you try to be someone you’re not when you’re writing, your audience will be able to feel your novel is lacking authenticity. Trying to be someone you’re not only means that you are trying to be someone else, and why in the writing world would you want to do that? It’s much better to be unique and to be your own person!

2. Discover your talents. Obviously if you are good at something and you enjoy it, it stands to reason that this is going to be something that you have a passion. But there’s a catch, you can’t just be good at something to make it your passion, you have to really enjoy it otherwise you aren’t going to get anywhere.

3. What sorts of things do you read about? Because apparently the likelihood is, is that the things we are passionate about the most we will often read about frequently, be it in books, magazines, or on the internet. Remember though, don’t let this affect point number 1! Don’t be exactly like the other authors’ work you are reading, use their work to inspire and feed what you’re passionate about.

4. Consult your inner child. This seemed to be a common theme when researching how to find passion. The key is to think back to what made you happy when you were a child and emulate that in your adult life.

5. Don’t give up. If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again. Let’s face it, if it isn’t glaringly obvious what you’re passionate about at the moment, then it probably isn’t going to happen overnight. You might think you’ve found something and then it doesn’t turn out to be right for you, just keep trying – there are plenty of things out there that could be for you!