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I’ve seen the little shop for years. It sits across the parking lot from a large backpacking store I frequently visit. But I had never stepped foot inside, though I wanted to many times.

Two days ago I realized I needed a good dart board. (I’ve been under some stress lately and instinctively felt that throwing darts at a bulls-eye would be soothing.) So I drove down to Sally’s Dart Shop and went in. The small store was empty – no customers, no Sally. But it was filled with rows and rows of darts, boards and dart-throwing accessories.

Then Sally emerged from a back room. She appeared to be in her 60s and was probably a beauty in her day. Her personality filled the room immediately. She welcomed me, asked my name, introduced herself, offered me some candy, and then captured me in a flow of enthusiasm for all things darts.

Sally was a championship dart-thrower some years ago, as the medals on the walls around her shop attested. Although wrist problems have prevented her from throwing darts anymore, her love of the sport has continued unabated. Her eyes gleamed as she showed me her large assortment of expensive, competition-grade darts – things of beauty, every one. Her face shone as she described the transcendent benefits I would reap from the sport.

By the time I walked out of her shop a half-hour later, having spent far more than I had anticipated, I was so excited to throw darts that I was tempted to take my new board out of the box right there in the parking lot and have at it.

As I drove home, I thought, “There’s someone who totally loves her work.” Then it occurred to me that because she loves it so much, it isn’t really work at all. It’s play. She can get up every morning and say, “I’m going to play!”

My next thought was, “Do I love writing as much as Sally loves darts?”

I’ll ask you the same question. Do you love writing with that sort of enthusiasm? If you do, you will spend time writing even when you don’t have to. You will find yourself thinking about it in the nooks and crannies of time that come your way during the day and night. Your love for what you’re doing will shine through your work and pull others into it and along with it – not just readers, but editors or bosses or whoever are the gatekeepers of your words. Your enthusiasm for writing will be perhaps even more important to your success than talent.

But what if your answer is no? What if you don’t love writing like Sally loves darts?

Let’s be frank. For most of us, writing is a love-hate relationship. We’re simply not going to love it all the time. There will be times when it’s not going well. When we seem blocked. When we’re frustrated with it. When we hate it.

The trick is … wait – there is no trick. You simply have to weather the storms and hang in there until the clouds part and the sun breaks through. I’m sure there were times in Sally’s competitive career when she was off her game. I’m sure she thought she hated the sport during those times. But really, she didn’t. She loved the game. She was just frustrated.

Had she quit during one of those times and taken a job at a bank, she wouldn’t have as many medals on her walls and would not have gone into semi-retirement as a past-champion with a delightful little dart shop. And I wouldn’t have a dart board on my office wall today.

Don’t quit. Keep writing through the tough, dry times. If you ever truly loved writing, that love is alive and well somewhere inside you. It’s just hiding. It will return, and when your enthusiasm breaks through once again, you’ll be forever grateful that you didn’t quit when it was dark.

PS. Take a shot at this week’s Word Shot! Click here.

Over two millennia ago a Hindu sage named Patanjali wrote something in his Yoga Sutras that all writers should memorize:

“When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break their bonds. Your mind transcends limitations. Your consciousness expands in every direction, and you find yourself in a new, great and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive, and you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than what you ever dreamed yourself to be.”

I find that passage to be inspiring in and of itself. Think of it: If you can find a “great purpose” or an “extraordinary project,” incredible things will happen:

• Your thoughts (your mind, your mental capabilities) will break their bonds and soar, transcending into new realms of potential.
• Your consciousness will expand outward in all directions, transporting you into a new and wonderful world.
• Forces inside you and around you, as well as abilities within you, will become activated.
• You will recognize your true greatness as a human being, and it will surprise you.

Last night I sat in bed with a notebook open on my lap, two virgin pages screaming a challenge at me. I wanted to write something good – the start of a novel, perhaps. But I was bone-tired and a novel is a monumental undertaking. I closed the notebook. It would have to wait.

This morning I have been thinking about last night’s cop-out. I was tired, to be sure. But I could have written something … at least the start of something. Why didn’t I?

I can’t say I didn’t have the energy. If a fire had broken out in the house right then, I would have been zipping around like a kid putting it out. I didn’t have much energy, but I had enough energy. It was the inspiration I lacked. That “great purpose” Patanjali spoke of – that “extraordinary project” – was not a sufficiently real presence in my mind to activate all the miracles inspiration makes possible.

Writers are more likely to suffer from a lack of inspiration than from a shortage of energy, talent or resources. The key to building a bonfire of inspiration within you is to identify your great purpose or extraordinary project, define it in detail, and then make it real – real enough to vividly see, feel, smell and taste it.

What could be a more extraordinary project than, say, writing a book, screenplay or other work that will affect thousands – maybe millions – of people? To what greater purpose could you devote your time and energies? Think about it. Live with it. Let it grow inside you. And importantly, believe in it. Let yourself fall into the transforming grip of inspiration.

Patanjali’s promises await you.

My first love was writing. Then I was seduced by photography. I should have resisted.

I have always loved photography. No surprise there – like writing, it is creative. But until a few years ago my involvement was purely platonic. It never threatened my relationship with writing.

Then I had the opportunity to write a series of travel articles for a magazine. The editor asked if I could supply photos, too. I said yes. It seemed the perfect combination of creative endeavors: the written word and the visual image. I invested in a nice Nikon digital SLR camera and a few expensive lenses. Then I went traveling: Egypt, Peru, Guatemala, the Abaco Islands, Turkey. I tried to get off the beaten path everywhere I went. The editor liked my articles and the photos I supplied. Other editors did, too. I enjoyed the work – who wouldn’t?

But then it hit me: My healthy love of photography had become an illicit affair that was hurting my relationship with my first love: writing. In short, I had been seduced by a camera and my lifetime liaison with a pen and keyboard was being jeopardizing.

At first I rationalized the affair, telling myself I could give my heart to both loves without negative consequences. But I was fooling myself. I could feel the stress and pain of, as the song says, being “torn between two lovers.” Instead of traveling with a simple pen and notebook in my hand, and maybe even a small audio recorder, I was constantly grappling with a camera, lenses, filters and tripods – all bulky, heavy and in need of constant vigilance against rain, dust, extreme temperature ranges and theft. Instead of absorbing the people and places I was encountering through the truer lens of my mind’s eye, I was seeing them solely through a camera lens. Instead of thinking new thoughts and having new ideas about what I was experiencing, I was fiddling with aperture settings and searching for the best camera angles. Instead of traveling inconspicuously, like a ghost, in order to observe without changing what I was observing by being observed myself, I was running around pointing my camera into people’s faces, making them rigid with self-consciousness.

It all came to head when I was with my son in a crime-ridden slum in Lima, Peru. We had walked into the neighborhood to visit a family he had known during the two years he had lived in the country. I took a few photos of a group of boys playing soccer on the street as we walked. After our visit to the family, we said goodbye and I turned to leave, but my son stopped me. “They’ve seen your camera,” he said. “We’d better not try to walk out of here by ourselves now. We may get out, but your camera definitely won’t.” I suggested we get a taxi. He said taxis didn’t come into the neighborhood because of the threat of being robbed. We couldn’t leave until we arranged for an “escort” to get us out.

That was just one of the places I traveled where carrying a camera was a definite liability to my personal safety. But I started to realize that it was much more than that. The need to take magazine-quality shots had shifted my focus from writing to photography. And for a writer, that’s dangerous.

Finally, I faced the truth: I am a writer, not a photographer. Thousands of photographers are out there looking for work, and most of them are better than I am. I need to focus on writing.

And so I have made the commitment to do so. It won’t be easy. Every time I see my Nikon and those lenses and filters I want to grab them and hop on a flight to a far corner of the world and let myself go. But I won’t. I’ll pocket my Moleskine notebook and my small, unobtrusive audio recorder. I’ll move quietly and largely unnoticed, without the burden of bulky, expensive and vulnerable photo equipment. I’ll think, have ideas, take notes, record sounds and conversations. I’ll observe life without changing it by pointing a camera at it.

I’m not saying I won’t carry a camera. I probably will. But it will be a small, simple point-and-shoot digital that I can hide away in my pocket to use as a sort of visual journal that I can reference when I need to remember exactly how that funny sign in the café was worded or what that old fisherman was wearing.

For writers, cameras have their place. But they should never take the place of a simple, inexpensive notebook.

Be faithful to your muse.

PS. Try your hand at Monday’s Word Shot. Put your words out there. Show off a bit.