TRANSCRIPT

This video dives into the fourth and final part of the Unstoppable Author Framework … hunger.

And hunger gets to the core of why you’re watching these videos. Deep inside of you, you may not know where it comes from, but you have a hunger, a desire, a passion to write picture books and to see your work get published and into the hands of children.

You see this as your reason to be. Your sense of purpose.

A few years ago, I came across the Japanese concept of Ikigai and to me it felt like it really applied to my desire to write and publish books. Ikigai combines the words iki (to live) and gai (reason). And it has Ikigai four elements:

1. What you love. 2. What you’re good at. 3. What the world needs. 4. What you can get paid for

When you pursue something that contains all four of these elements, you become aligned with your purpose. And when you’re aligned with your purpose, that's when you find ultimate fulfillment.

And I know this is kind of esoteric what I'm saying, but I found this is true for me. When I work on freelance advertising copywriting projects, I feel like I’m walking down the wrong path. And it's not that it's a bad path. It's fine. It’s just not the one that gives me a sense of joy or makes me feel like I’m doing what I should be doing. But, you know, there are bills need to be paid, so I do what I need to do until I can get back on my path.

So, if you sense that writing is your hunger, your purpose, there’s only one thing left to do: and that's to write. Writing isn’t the only factor to becoming published, but it’s impossible to get published without actually writing.

So writing is the fourth part of the Unstoppable Author Framework. That's it, writing.

And here's how it works into that: Like the other parts of the framework, you don’t have to commit a ton of time to it. But you do need to write every single day. Commit to at least 25 minutes.

Doing this will make you feel good about yourself, which will inspire you to keep going. This also helps to keep a certain rhythm going as you're writing. If you come back to a project after not working on it for a week, say, it will take longer to get back into the flow of your story and what you were planning to do.

So, I'm going to leave this video with my favorite quote that keeps me committed to writing:

“Writers write.”

Thank you so much for watching. If you got any value out of this video, please like it, subscribe to my channel and share the video with other aspiring picture book authors.