“I hate writing. I love having written.” Dorothy Parker
This means that many new writers think that all one has to do is sit down and start typing and miraculously the Muse will alight and bestow a blessing and the book will stream out in perfect sentences. Thus a prize-winning and bestselling book is born and the author is destined for super-stardom.
But I don't think that has ever been the truth.
Organizing ideas and plotting and outlining is hard, writing first draft words is difficult and editing can be the most painful part as you try to wrestle your manuscript into something others might want to read. By the end of the process, you are likely to be seriously over this book and you will never want to read it again!
Here's an excerpt from my journal in 2010:
“It's so hard writing a book. I feel like I'm wading through mud up to my waist in a rain storm. Every step is an effort. The weight drags me backward, sucking me down. Then I get a clear patch and the sun comes out and I surprise myself with what I write, and it's actually alright. Then the mud sucks and I am bogged down again. Does this ever get better?”
Here's an excerpt from an email I received from a fellow writer:
“Literally every single person I've ever met thinks they could also be a writer. The popular image of a writer is that we put on a funny hat, slug back some whiskey, and pound out an award-winning manuscript in one long night. That mythology has zero regard for the planning, outlining, plotting, editing, rewriting, editing again – the ages and ages and ages of WORK. Sometimes I roll my eyes at those people. But most of the time it is so draining. They really, genuinely think my job is that easy! I can't think of any other creative pursuit that everyone else is so completely convinced they could do if only they had a few free hours.”
And here's a quote from multi-award-winning author Haruki Murakami:
“For me writing a novel is like climbing a steep mountain, struggling up the face of the cliff, reaching the summit after a long and arduous ordeal.”
And more from Ernest Hemingway,
“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
And finally, George Orwell, author of literary classics 1984 and Animal Farm:
“Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.”
Clearly, writing a book is not an easy task for many of the greatest writers, so why expect it to be for you?
Antidote
Decide why you want to write and that will pull you through the difficult parts.
I write because I want some kind of immortality, because otherwise I'll have nothing to show for the years that pass. I measure my life by what I create, and every day, I'm grateful that I am not stuck in my old corporate consulting day job.
I also have a craving to write if I go too long without the blank page. I get grumpy when I don't write. It's my therapy, my indulgence, but also my truth, my craft, the way I think, my only way of processing the world.
These reasons carry me through the hard parts. So why do you write? What will carry you through the difficult times?
It doesn't have to be so hard. Enjoy it if you can!
Then there's the truly radical thought that writing doesn't actually have to be that hard. It can even be fun and enjoyable! As veteran author of several hundred novels, Dean Wesley Smith, says, “You need to let the two year old play.”
My two year old inner creative was shut down for years, through exams and rigorous testing, through being a good girl at school, college and then getting a ‘proper' corporate job. My husband says that I'm a serious little sausage and play is anathema to my Protestant work ethic. But I've been trying to unlearn much of this.
I've started doing coloring before writing, as my inner creative child likes color and stickers and lovely stationery. I even published an adult coloring book with my Dad! I'm trying to laugh more as I create and write down the silly things that come, without censoring them. Maybe you could also try having fun with your writing?
“You do not need to save the world. Your art doesn't need to be important … It's okay if your work is fun for you, or healing or fascinating or frivolous. It's all allowed. Your own reasons to create are enough … Enjoying your work with all your heart is the only truly subversive position left to take!” Elizabeth Gilbert