Are you having a hard time getting up to speed today? Don't feel like doing what needs to be done? If this article does not help you find your motivation, you are probably a lost cause!
PW
What, Pray Tell, Would it Take to
MOTIVATE You?
Many years ago, when I first began studying how to write
fiction, I read John Braine’s Writing a Novel. Braine
was British; his most famous novels are Room at the Top and The Crying Game. It was from Braine that I first heard
about another British novelist, Anthony Burgess (his real name was John Burgess
Wilson), whose best-known work is A Clockwork Orange.
When I researched Burgess I was blown away by his fascinating personal
story—what caused him to become a novelist. It gave me a whole new perspective
re motivation. It just might do the same for you, which is why I’m going to
relate it to you.
When he was 40 years old, Burgess was diagnosed with a brain
tumor; he was told he had about a year to live. Sobering news, wouldn’t you
say? He was penniless, was going to die, and was going to leave his wife,
Lynne, a widow—a totally broke widow.
This left him so distraught that he decided to make an attempt to write novels,
in order to produce royalties for Lynne. For a number of years he thought he
had it in him to be a novelist, but was unable to pull the trigger on the
concept. Now, motivated by financial
desperation for the woman he loved, he sat down and began writing. He did this
despite the tremendous odds against him even getting his work published
posthumously. Still, since he couldn’t think of any other way of earning money
to leave behind for Lynne, writing it would be.
One of Burgess’s more memorable quotes: “We all need money, but
there are degrees of desperation.”
No kidding.
To say Burgess wrote prolifically during his year to live might
be one of the great understatements of all time. He produced five-and-a-half
novels; more output than many better-known writers—Harper Lee and J.D.
Salinger, to name just two—have produced over the span of an entire lifetime.
Quite an achievement.
The great irony of this story, I’m happy to say, is that Anthony
Burgess did not die as expected. His tumor went into remission and eventually
disappeared completely. He wound up living a long life and wrote over 70 books
and composed more than 65 musical compositions. The great question is, though,
would he have written anything at all, if
he hadn’t been handed that terrible prognosis of death? Would he have been motivated to become the great writer he turned out
to be? Fascinating question, isn’t it?
What about you? Is there greatness inside of you that’s never
going to come out because you’re never going to be motivated the way Anthony Burgess was? Perhaps it
would behoove you to ask yourself what you’d do if you were put into the same circumstances Burgess was.
If you were told you had only one year to live, to make your mark upon this
world, what would you do?
And if you would do it under those circumstances, why won’t you
do it now? What is it that’s preventing you from charging ahead and doing it now?
You know what Nike would say—“Just do it!”
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