It’s difficult not to be envious of those more successful than you. People you like, respect and appreciate do things that earn them a great deal of traffic, if not a full-blown career, and you wonder, “Well, why can’t I do that?” After all, I have opinions about games and movies; I love to write and, by some accounts, am pretty damn good at it; I even occasionally say funny things and can doodle a little.

So why am I not doing these things more often? Why don’t I try taking IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! to a different format? Why am I not chasing down every dragon that bangs down the door of my imagination, be it breathing fire or sporting a beard or wearing a very fine hat?

Simply put: You can’t chase every dragon.

The one that’s been taunting me since I was a teenager is becoming a novelist. It’s taunted others and they’ve found their roads to bringing the beast down. Good. I’m glad to see talented people succeed. I could try following the same road they followed, but in the end, how much originality would there be in that approach? And wouldn’t that road be just another dayjob, no different save in the name and the mean details?

I continue to be an amateur, aspiring novelist, while undertaking a daily job to try and keep the bills paid. As the sole source of income for my household, my responsibility to the others in that household come first. I can’t short-change a bill to supplement my coffee habit, I can’t leave the cupboards bare to pre-order a new game, and I sure as hell can’t take a flying leap out of a semi-stable position to go chasing another dragon when I’m already hot on the tail of the biggest one of my life.

I look at my peers with a mix of appreciation and envy: appreciation that they’ve not only chased but brought down some of their dragons, and envy that I don’t have quite as much time to do the same. But we all take different roads. We all see the heights we wish to reach. We all climb out of valleys of darkness. And we all face barriers between us and our goals.

We can’t all use the same sledgehammer to break those barriers down. It’s all on us. Nobody can do it for us, and while we may draw inspiration or encouragement from others, in the end the hammer’s in our hands, not theirs.

I might not be successful right now, or even in the near future. I may continue to struggle. I know I’ll still have to make difficult decisions, turn down things I crave and live with questions for myself of what I could have done differently, what others might have done, what could have been.

On the other hand?

I’m working. I’m editing. I’m critiquing. I’m gaming. And I’m writing.

It’s hammer time.

You need it to ride a bike. It’s required for things like yoga, martial arts, arcobatics and parkour. Heck, without adequate balance you’ll struggle to walk in a straight line. It’s important.

This morning Chuck suggested folks interested in freelance writing punch themselves in the face instead. To an extent, I agree. Chasing down work constantly, uncertain of the time money will be coming your way, unable to leave your flat for fear of getting struck by a car or some masonry or the Ebola virus when you don’t have health insurance – I can sympathize with those fears. Freelance work of any kind carries that palpable constant dread, that doing something you love can combat effectively if you keep your nose down on that grindstone.

On the other hand, participating in a day job that isn’t in that field of interest carries a different burden. I’m quick to bemoan the nature of the work, the shenanigans inherent with any office environment, the hours and necessity of commuting – you name it, I can bitch about it. But the paycheck is nice, the work is not all that unreasonable and I’m fairly competent at what I do. I think.

The key, for me, was striking a balance between doing what pays and doing what I love. One day the twain might meet, but for now, I do what I must to pay the bills and fill in what spare time I can with writing, or edits, or spinning new ideas. It’s not a perfect system, not by a long shot. But the aspirations to get a finished work on shelves gives me something to reach for when the job is disappointing, and the job keeps the lights on and computers running at home, as well as keeping the cats and my very patient wife fed.

You need to strike a balance in your writing, too.

Most lives are not defined by one emotion. Moments of levity have their place in drama, and comedy can be used as a conduit to guide an audience to a serious matter. When the balance is out of whack, you can come across a drama too camp to take seriously or the Very Special Episode of a sitcom. I don’t necessarily like beating the same drums over and over, but Inception uses some clever writing to slip humor into an otherwise highly cerebral thriller while Scott Pilgrim similarly slips insightful and poignant observations on maturity and relationships into the boss battles and indie rock.

Give me more examples of balance. Show me your signposts. Let’s see if we’re heading in the same direction.

More often than not, characters are what will carry your story. It’s rare, however, for a character to be exactly the same at the end of a story as they are at the beginning. Just as carefully as you plot out the course of the story, you need to tend the growth of your characters. There’s a difference, you see, between growth, change and total derailment.

Growth is the most natural and gradual progression of a character. It’s the basis of a coming of age story. Luke Skywalker wouldn’t be anywhere near as memorable or effective as the hero of an epic trilogy of space operas if he didn’t start out as a whiny farmboy kicking sand as he dreams of life among the stars. In the new Star Trek movie, Jim Kirk militantly avoids any sort of real responsibility until he’s prompted to join Starfleet Academy, and from there he begins to grow. Scott Pilgrim may have remained an immature self-centered jerk leaning dangerously towards hipster territory if he hadn’t fallen for Ramona. Marty McFly, John McClaine, Tony Stark, Peter Parker… I could go on.

Change happens more often to supporting characters. To see the difference, take a look at what TV Tropes likes to call the Heel Face Turn. A good example is Captain Renault from Casablanca. A flattering French police captain who ‘goes with the wind’ and tries to make the Nazis comfortable so they don’t kill everybody, towards the end of the film he realizes the folly in working with Vichy and moves towards Free France. Likewise, the Operative at the end of Serenity is helped to realize what the Alliance is really all about. The difference between characters growing and changing is that growth is gradual, while change is more sudden and sometimes less than adequately explained.

Derailment is what happens when you don’t plan a character’s arc or give no basis or foundation for their change. There’s an establishing moment in Star Wars for example, when Han shoots first. If you don’t remember that, maybe you’ve only seen the “Special Edition” released in 1997 where a quick edit turns Han Solo from a cool, skilled gunslinger who gets the drop on an overconfident blabbermouth to a guy who got extremely lucky. Take a look at characters in MacGuyver, 24 and Bones to see how writers take one aspect of a reasonably well-rounded character – Mac’s inventiveness, Jack’s badassery, Booth’s boisterous tongue-in-cheek nature – and blows it way out of proportion for one reason or another, sacrificing real growth in favor of a disproportionate caricature. Maid Marian in Costner’s Robin Hood is shown to be more than capable of taking care of herself, provided it’s not the Sheriff on top of her – then all she can do is call for Robin. The first Alien depicted the xenomorph as a dark and mysterious creature with frightening intelligence and perhaps even odd fetishes. Every subsequent film has dialed down the mystique and sexual undertones to the point of showing them as generic alien baddies to be chewed up by automatic weapons fire. The number of examples of character derailment that exist show that for every good decision made by writers concerning the growth of a character, there are at least five bad ones.

When you’re getting ready to get a character started in your story, it pays off to take a bit of time to figure out where they’re going. Even if the tracks are invisible to the reader – and sometimes this is even preferable – lay them out and make sure they’re solid before you begin. Because something coming off the rails usually ends in a nasty mess.

When you write, having other people look over your work is critical. Provided you have some desire to get your work published, it’s important to know how it’ll be perceived by minds other than your own. It’s important to keep a bit of distance between yourself and the work at this point in the process, because some of the questions and comments made might seem harsh. However, they’re ultimately going to make the work better.

Case in point.

My wife was reading something I wrote last night. She commented on some of the things she liked, but one question she asked caught me off-guard: “Why is this in here?” She was referring to a particular character, and what I noticed more than the question was my response. It took me a long time to formulate one. A long time. Like, a minute or two.

And even as I was telling her my rather weak justification, I realized what she had found.

A darling.

Now, I didn’t Mozambique Drill the thing right away. So I have a darling here, I told myself. What do I do with it? How can I take something that goes against the impetus I had for writing what I wrote in the first place, and mold it into something better? It’s something I’m still chewing on. But I wouldn’t have noticed it without the critique.

Entertain those questions you’re asked by your readers, don’t dismiss them out of hand. Think about what your writing, especially after you’ve written it. The end result of the work will be much more favorable.