Yesterday, I was trawling iTunes for a decent podcast about writing. After a while, I gave up, because 90% of them talked incessantly about “self-discipline,” “making writing a habit,” “getting your butt in the chair,” “getting yourself to write.” To me, that’s six flavors of fucked up.
Okay, yes—I see why we might want to “make writing a habit.” If we want to finish anything, we’ll have to write at least semi-regularly. In practical terms, I get it.
But maybe before we force our butts into chairs, we should ask why it’s so hard to “get” ourselves to write. We aren’t deranged; our brains say “I don’t want to do this” for a reason. We should take that reason seriously.
Most of us resist writing because it hurts and it’s hard. Well, you say, writing isn’t supposed to be easy—but there’s hard, and then there’s hard. For many of us, sitting down to write feels like being asked to solve a problem that is both urgent and unsolvable—“I have to, but it’s impossible, but I have to, but it’s impossible.” It feels fucking awful, so naturally we avoid it.
We can’t “make writing a habit,” then, until we make it less painful. Something we don’t just “get” ourselves to do.
The “make writing a habit” people are trying to do that, in their way. If you do something regularly, the theory goes, you stop dreading it with such special intensity because it just becomes a thing you do. But my god, if you’re still in that “dreading it” phase and someone tells you to “make writing a habit,” that sounds horrible.
So many of us already dismiss our own pain constantly. If we turn writing into another occasion for mute suffering, for numb and joyless endurance, we 1) will not write more, and 2) should not write more, because we should not intentionally hurt ourselves.
Seriously. If you want to write more, don’t ask, “how can I make myself write?” Ask, “why is writing so painful for me and how can I ease that pain?” Show some compassion for yourself. Forgive yourself for not being the person you wish you were and treat the person you are with some basic decency. Give yourself a fucking break for avoiding a thing that makes you feel awful.
Here’s what stops more people from writing than anything else: shame. That creeping, nagging sense of ‘should be,’ ‘should have been,’ and ‘if only I had…’ Shame lives in the body, it clenches our muscles when we sit at the keyboard, takes up valuable mental space with useless, repetitive conversations. Shame, and the resulting paralysis, are what happen when the whole world drills into you that you should be writing every day and you’re not.
The antidote, he says, is to treat yourself kindly:
For me, writing always begins with self-forgiveness. I don’t sit down and rush headlong into the blank page. I make coffee. I put on a song I like. I drink the coffee, listen to the song. I don’t write. Beginning with forgiveness revolutionizes the writing process, returns its being to a journey of creativity rather than an exercise in self-flagellation. I forgive myself for not sitting down to write sooner, for taking yesterday off, for living my life. That shame? I release it. My body unclenches; a new lightness takes over once that burden has floated off. There is room, now, for story, idea, life.
Writing has the potential to bring us so much joy. Why else would we wantto do it? But first we’ve got to unlearn the pain and dread and anxiety and shame attached to writing—not just so we can write more, but for our own sakes! Forget “making writing a habit”—how about “being less miserable”? That’s a worthy goal too!
Luckily, there are ways to do this. But before I get into them, please absorb this lesson: if you want to write, start by valuing your own well-being. Start by forgiving yourself. And listen to yourself when something hurts.
@thassalia asks: “When do you know you’ve hit a new level as a writer?”
Oof, this is a good question, it brings up many thoughts. I think a writer’s growth is driven by reading, thinking, writing, and paying attention while living, and you won’t know what’s cooking below the surface until you’re actively writing.
I can never understand I’ve gained a skill until I re-read previous work that lacks it, or I go back to a piece in progress and find that what had been a daunting mess now looks like a new kind of fun.
Growth can also feel like you’ve forgotten how to do something, and that’s scary. It’s hard to believe in that moment that we sometimes need to forget an old way to make room for learning a new way. That unlearning isn’t losing, but rewiring. That at the end of the process, you’ll have both ways and an understanding of which to use when.
Frustration, balking, being tired of my own shit, panic, nervous laughter, these are all signs that the story is bigger than I am (currently), and I’ll need to persist until I develop what it’s asking of me, in order to understand it and tell it. Up to and including taking a break and writing one or several other stories before coming back. But the big ones always keep calling for me to come back and take another crack, until one day I’m strong enough to lift them, or brave enough to open that dark place and peer inside, or subtle enough to describe what I see instead of smacking it with a thesaurus like a bug.
Stories, at their deepest root for me, are profound and specific wordless sensations; that’s what drives me to the end, pinning down that complex gestalt of sensation. Sometimes they don’t like any of the costumes or props in the mind, so they sink back and bide their time for another season. Sometimes you hit upon a character, or a situation, and a dam breaks in your skull.
Writing is a ridiculous art that we are literally making up as we go along.
My advice when folks are struggling with writing in the third-person omniscient is
to Lemony Snicket it up. Give your omniscient narrator strong opinions
about what’s going on. Don’t fall into the trap of assuming that the
third-person omniscient perspective must also use the objective voice;
those are two separate things, and many of the most popular and successful writers who’ve written in the third-person omniscient do not, in fact, use the objective voice.
“Willingness to admit the narrative has a voice” is, I think, a big part of what makes young adult literature so much more engaging than a lot of books marketed at adults, particularly adult men.
“Lemony Snicket it up” is a very good phrase and very good advice
I just appreciate seeing third-person omniscient recognized as an actual POV, because people are often dismissive of it (and yes, this is good)
When my father died, I wrote on the plane back to the US from the funeral, because I needed to not be in my head. A month or so later, I was ready to look at what I’d written, and found basically all the dialogue for The Doctor’s Wife written and waiting for me. Sometimes we write to save our own lives.
When I was training to be a battered women’s advocate, my supervisor said something that really blew my mind:
“You can always assume one thing about your clients; and that is that they are doing their best. Always assume everyone is doing their best. And if they’re having a day where their best just isn’t that great, or their best doesn’t look like your best, you have to be okay with that.”
Any now whenever anyone in my life, either a friend or a client, frustrates me, disappoints me, or pisses me off, I just tell myself They are doing their best. Their best isn’t that great today, but I have days where my best isn’t that great either.
Op I’d like to thank you for sharing this. Ever since the first time I’ve read it I’ve held it in my mind and it really has helped me to be kinder to others and to myself.
Queer Fiction Writer 