Episode 31
On this Episode of Fulfillment Equation
When this week’s guest, Sharon Bala, moved from a big city to a remote area, she found a door closed on her corporate communications career and a new one opened for pursuing her interest in being a writer. Fast forward years later, and Sharon has become an award-winning, best-selling author whose debut novel “The Boat People” has been a national hit.
In this episode, Sharon describes how she learned to let go of thinking about traditional measures of achievement and instead discovered how to find achievement in the work itself. As she explains, “All you can control are the words on the page, so for me the ambition is to make those words on the page as good as they can be – as true, as resonant, as interesting and as beautiful as they can be”. Redefining ambition allowed Sharon to let go of all of the things she couldn’t control (book sales, cover design, etc.) and focus on what she could control.
Sharon also offers helpful advice for venturing bravely into something new, particularly for aspiring writers. Often the hardest part is just getting started! How do you get from a place of nothing to a place of something? The answer is: one word at a time, one sentence at a time, one paragraph at a time, one chapter at a time. As Sharon says so simply, “if you want to be a writer, just start writing”!
She also describes how to manage your own expectations to take steps toward creating something you’ll be proud of. As Sharon says, “The first draft’s job is not to be good, it’s just to be done”. Then the second draft is a little better and the third draft is a little better and so on, until hopefully you reach a final draft that meets (or even better, exceeds) your expectations.
In our conversation we also explore developing resilience to failure and rejection, and how community is just as important to a writer as is solitude.
Finally, we build her equation (she is the first to rethink it as a pie chart with percentages!): 60% v + 30% cf + 10% en
Plus, what’s the one thing that Sharon says a lot of new writers underestimate? Listen to hear more!
“Fulfillment is a good day of writing.”
– Sharon Bala
About the Guest
Sharon Bala is a best-selling author whose debut novel, The Boat People, won the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction (among many other awards), was featured on CBC’s Canada Reads and has been translated into four languages. She lives in St. John’s, Newfoundland with her husband Tom and is a member of The Port Authority writing group.
Transcript
Transcript coming soon
