Quitting my job to write full time has been one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. In some ways, it helped me to access a depth of confidence and creativity that I’d long thought beyond my reach. That said, I’d never recommend it to anyone else.

Making a drastic life shift like this came after a lot of thought and planning, and if I’m being honest, more than a little desperation. For two years I planned my departure from the regular working world, and it wasn’t until the last few months that I decided to make writing the focus of my time off. Somewhere in the plans to travel and generally goof off, I’d realized a few things. It’s not likely that I’ll ever again be in a situation of having so little responsibility. No kids, no mortgage, no car payments, no debt, no job, and a fair amount of fiscal freedom. For a few months at least, I could live the dream and finally get down to work.

It’s never that easy though. Last week I received an email from a young writer who is sitting on the opposite end of that spectrum. He feels that his job at a call centre is crushing his ability to be creative, and that the stresses of life are frustrating his attempts at writing. I can easily relate to this, because I felt my job was doing the same thing. I was lucky enough to be in a great working environment, but the work itself was tiresome and frustrated me to no end. I felt I couldn’t possibly write anything worth reading unless I could break free of that external pressure.

I was wrong. To be fair, I’ve known this for a very long time, but a part of me didn’t really want to admit it. You see, I suffer from something I call Grass-Is-Greener Syndrome [GIGS]. You might be afflicted by GIGS if you’ve ever uttered the phrase “things will be so much better when…” or “I could write so much more if…” Unfortunately, all I have to tell you is that the circumstances don’t matter. You will either write, or you won’t, and there is a very strong likelihood that you will write better if you’re struggling against external pressures. For many writers, there is a power in suffering that translates into the work they create. It is a writer’s job to make the reader feel something, and many writers use energy from the extremes of their emotion to write the words that will make a reader feel most keenly. Everything that happens to you is fuel for your work, but this is nothing new, and you’ve read this all before. You don’t really want to know that it’s just as difficult to work when you have all day to focus on it exclusively.

What I offer you, if you’re stuck and feeling as though life is keeping you from achieving your goals, is the idea of a grand gesture. I’m talking about doing something big and scary in the name of your art. For me, it was quitting my job, but for you it may mean hiding your TV in the closet and putting a desk in its place. Maybe you’ll rent a workspace for two hours every week so that you have a proper place to work. You might sign up for a year long writer’s studio, or even a weekend introduction to fiction writing class. Maybe it will be as small as buying your first notebook in a very long time, and deciding that you will write one creative sentence every week. Only you know what little push you need, and the thing to remember is that you must do something that scares you a little bit, and that the act itself is meaningless without the followthrough.

There is power in grand gestures. You may not think you have the ideal circumstances to be creative or productive, but the only thing that separates you from the great masters of this world in this respect is that they didn’t let such a silly thing stop them from trying. Making a grand gesture in honour of your work may not put your ass in the chair every day, or keep you working hard, but it might just give you enough confidence to convert you from someone who wishes they could do something, to someone who does it.