To go along with my post whining about reading, I wanted to dive a little deeper into why I think writing is hard.
There are lots of reasons that I don't "like" to write. Well, that's not perfectly accurate. I like to write. I know some authors hate writing but love having written. They enjoy the idea of the completed project. While I enjoy that, too, I don't dislike writing. When I get my fingers on the keyboard and my thoughts are firing correctly, it's euphoric. During my writing retreats, I will get into a groove that is only interrupted by the need to change CDs (since I write at a cabin with no WiFi, I can't stream music uninterrupted). Hours will flit by, the sunlight slowly sliding across the windows, as I type on, oblivious to the external world, lost in the story I'm telling.
That's amazing stuff right there.
But those are rare moments. I normally get a handful of minutes--at most, an hour--with which I could, were I to so choose, write. The call of other books, sleep (I'm always so tired), playing with my boys, watching a show, or playing a video game can be overpowering. If I only have limited time, getting involved in writing something--novel, blog, or even poetry--can feel incomplete. I don't like being cramped, and I always have more I want to say than I have time or energy to put into it. This means that the exercise of daily blog writing that I've been doing the last little while is an attempt to break out of the non-writing funk I've been in for far too long.
There are other things that make writing hard for me. I have a lot of things that I'd like to write. Lots of books, lots of ideas, lots of possibilities. But I don't want to be too split when it comes to my focus. If I'm writing a novel, I want to focus exclusively on that--so much so that it can be difficult to edit, another part of my writing that I struggle with. I don't want to "stretch my writing muscles" anywhere but on the current project. That monomania can work well on writing retreats, but is catastrophic during my day-to-day (that is, the vast majority of my life).
And I wonder how healthy it is for me to pursue writing at all. I have delusions of grandeur to combat, of course--everyone does, I think, to some level or another--and a realistic expectation that I, in all likelihood, will not make money as an author. So why do I do it? Self-doubt and frustration also defuse the impulse to write, making it feel like a futility.
Interestingly, my job as an English teacher, complete with the obligatory Creative Writing class, helps to create the desire to write more. I would feel hypocritical if I don't try to improve as a writer while at the same time encouraging my students to do the same. This is definitely a positive part of my life, but I can't help but worry that I'm like a cigarette addict who hangs around the smoking sections of airports to get a guilty whiff because I'm not strong enough to make a clean break.
I find reasons not to write--and what better indication that something is hard than the relying on excuses to avoid it? Even my computer can so "sabotage" my efforts (as if a pen and paper couldn't serve me) that I sometimes don't write because I get frustrated with the technology. As I pursue this craft, I do so hoping that I'll be able to improve it to the point that people will pay to read my stories.
I often daydream what it would be like if everyday, essentially, were a writing retreat. Get the boys off to school, sequester myself in my office until lunch, work until the boys got home, and call it a day. How much could I write? (Probably close to 10,000 words a day, unless I miss my guess--that is a huge output, meaning I could have substantial quantities of books written in, say, a month.) How much could I edit? (Difficult to say; my editing process is ill-defined, but I do about 10 pages an hour...a glacial pace compared to the progress I feel I make when I'm in the drafting process.)
But could I do it? Could I say, "I'm writing a book in January, one in April, and one in October, with editing, touring, and conventions during the remainder of the time," and be happy? Could I find satisfaction in that life?
I don't think so. I believe that I would need to get out of my head and my space more often than that, which means that I would need to keep a teaching job. So if I taught only two hours a day, got home in time for lunch, and wrote for three or four hours until it was time to get the boys, I would be throwing down about 4,500 words a day. Add a solid day of writing on Saturday and I'm looking at about 20,000 words a week. I would need a couple of months of that schedule to start and end a book (which I try to hit between 110k and 140k, now that my magnum opus was so big and unwieldy I set off a little Twitter storm of irritation among the agents I followed), which means that, with other responsibilities and the realities of life, I could maybe manage two books a year. Interspersing the editing that I would need to do, the cons, revisions, tours (lol), and what have you, it's hard to see all of that effort turning into something comparable to my steady, modest paycheck as a fulltime teacher.
Writing, then, is hard because it can feel the most important thing I do, and simultaneously the most pointless. It's hard in the way all dreams are hard: It is quintessentially human, yet ethereal. It's a contradiction.
There are lots of reasons that I don't "like" to write. Well, that's not perfectly accurate. I like to write. I know some authors hate writing but love having written. They enjoy the idea of the completed project. While I enjoy that, too, I don't dislike writing. When I get my fingers on the keyboard and my thoughts are firing correctly, it's euphoric. During my writing retreats, I will get into a groove that is only interrupted by the need to change CDs (since I write at a cabin with no WiFi, I can't stream music uninterrupted). Hours will flit by, the sunlight slowly sliding across the windows, as I type on, oblivious to the external world, lost in the story I'm telling.
That's amazing stuff right there.
But those are rare moments. I normally get a handful of minutes--at most, an hour--with which I could, were I to so choose, write. The call of other books, sleep (I'm always so tired), playing with my boys, watching a show, or playing a video game can be overpowering. If I only have limited time, getting involved in writing something--novel, blog, or even poetry--can feel incomplete. I don't like being cramped, and I always have more I want to say than I have time or energy to put into it. This means that the exercise of daily blog writing that I've been doing the last little while is an attempt to break out of the non-writing funk I've been in for far too long.
There are other things that make writing hard for me. I have a lot of things that I'd like to write. Lots of books, lots of ideas, lots of possibilities. But I don't want to be too split when it comes to my focus. If I'm writing a novel, I want to focus exclusively on that--so much so that it can be difficult to edit, another part of my writing that I struggle with. I don't want to "stretch my writing muscles" anywhere but on the current project. That monomania can work well on writing retreats, but is catastrophic during my day-to-day (that is, the vast majority of my life).
And I wonder how healthy it is for me to pursue writing at all. I have delusions of grandeur to combat, of course--everyone does, I think, to some level or another--and a realistic expectation that I, in all likelihood, will not make money as an author. So why do I do it? Self-doubt and frustration also defuse the impulse to write, making it feel like a futility.
Interestingly, my job as an English teacher, complete with the obligatory Creative Writing class, helps to create the desire to write more. I would feel hypocritical if I don't try to improve as a writer while at the same time encouraging my students to do the same. This is definitely a positive part of my life, but I can't help but worry that I'm like a cigarette addict who hangs around the smoking sections of airports to get a guilty whiff because I'm not strong enough to make a clean break.
I find reasons not to write--and what better indication that something is hard than the relying on excuses to avoid it? Even my computer can so "sabotage" my efforts (as if a pen and paper couldn't serve me) that I sometimes don't write because I get frustrated with the technology. As I pursue this craft, I do so hoping that I'll be able to improve it to the point that people will pay to read my stories.
I often daydream what it would be like if everyday, essentially, were a writing retreat. Get the boys off to school, sequester myself in my office until lunch, work until the boys got home, and call it a day. How much could I write? (Probably close to 10,000 words a day, unless I miss my guess--that is a huge output, meaning I could have substantial quantities of books written in, say, a month.) How much could I edit? (Difficult to say; my editing process is ill-defined, but I do about 10 pages an hour...a glacial pace compared to the progress I feel I make when I'm in the drafting process.)
But could I do it? Could I say, "I'm writing a book in January, one in April, and one in October, with editing, touring, and conventions during the remainder of the time," and be happy? Could I find satisfaction in that life?
I don't think so. I believe that I would need to get out of my head and my space more often than that, which means that I would need to keep a teaching job. So if I taught only two hours a day, got home in time for lunch, and wrote for three or four hours until it was time to get the boys, I would be throwing down about 4,500 words a day. Add a solid day of writing on Saturday and I'm looking at about 20,000 words a week. I would need a couple of months of that schedule to start and end a book (which I try to hit between 110k and 140k, now that my magnum opus was so big and unwieldy I set off a little Twitter storm of irritation among the agents I followed), which means that, with other responsibilities and the realities of life, I could maybe manage two books a year. Interspersing the editing that I would need to do, the cons, revisions, tours (lol), and what have you, it's hard to see all of that effort turning into something comparable to my steady, modest paycheck as a fulltime teacher.
Writing, then, is hard because it can feel the most important thing I do, and simultaneously the most pointless. It's hard in the way all dreams are hard: It is quintessentially human, yet ethereal. It's a contradiction.
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