I Don't Like Writing

Okay, so yeah, uber clicky-baitey title, guilty as charged. But there’s actually a grain of truth in there. Hear me out.

For almost two years, I’ve been more or less writing full time. Publishing? Not so much (a little, but no where near what I had hoped or planned to publish).

Still, I’ve wrestled tens of thousands of words out of the ether and flung them at my computer’s hard drive. Multiple novel drafts. Hours and hours of editing stories I wrote years ago. Countless revisions on a TV pitch. My first TV screenplay. Short stories for my email list. And, of course, blog posts.

In short, I’ve been writing. A lot.

But I’ve also been struggling. Struggling to shake the always-looming specter of imposter syndrome. Struggling to write every day. Struggling to bring my current novel to a point where I can publish it (a feat that was beginning to take on a Sisyphean quality).

Some background: after obtaining a B.A. in creative writing decades ago and doing fuck-all with it, I suddenly found myself wanting to write a story in an imaginary world. This was fifteen years ago, though it took over ten more before I truly started thinking about really pursuing writing full-time.

I’d begun to imagine a lifestyle where I could write. Just . . . write.

All day. Every day. Any day. No job to report to. No company to run. No distractions. An utterly flexible schedule where I wasn’t tied to a desk or phone for hours at a time.

A couple of years ago, I managed to make that happen (for at least a couple of years). I could be totally focused on crafting stories.

Cue the parade, release the birds, fire the confetti cannons! At last, I was living the dream!

After months in writer’s paradise, I can honestly say it’s not what I imagined. The self-doubts multiplied like locusts, grew like gremlins, and started showing up each day with bullhorns. That flexible schedule? I’ve come to believe it’s an outright hindrance to my productivity. And every minute I’m not writing feels like I’m cheating on the dream I worked so hard to achieve. I couldn’t turn to my usual go-to stress relievers (video games and reading) without hearing the persistent whine of self-recrimination (“you should be writing . . .”).

Eventually the joy of writing without actually publishing evaporated. Instead of diving into my worlds and hanging out with my characters, I started punching the clock and two-fisting shots of guilt and shame until my wife called me in for dinner.

That’s when I realized I wasn’t - and couldn’t - be happy just writing.

I needed a better balance. I needed other activities to distract me from THAT GOD DAMN PLOT KNOT I CAN’T SEEM TO UNTIE so I could return the next day with fresh eyes and a better chance of fixing it. I needed to find a community of similarly-focused writers who were walking the walk and offered encouragement that, YES, I COULD DO THIS. I needed to stop futzing with my writing and share it with the world. My isolated, offline navel-gazing was a self-perpetuating (and self-fulfilling) destructive echo-chamber of doubt that kept slapping my hand away from the “publish” button.

Last year I was invited to join a writer’s group, and it’s been amazing. Wished I had done it sooner. The constructive criticism has been immensely helpful, and I’m learning to improve my own craft by not just reading but critiquing others’ works.

But the real inflection point happened two weeks ago. After publishing my second book, I returned to my writing with a level of excitement I hadn’t experienced in a long time. And I was suddenly able to do the tear-the-plot-down-to-the-studs kind of editing on my 100K+ novel that I either couldn’t or didn’t want to do before.

I put down the lipstick and led little Pork Chop to the back of the barn.

I grabbed a blowtorch and gleefully watched the flames dance.

I ruthlessly ripped handfuls of plot lines out like they were the innards of a pumpkin on the verge of Jack-O-Lantern status.

A leaner, cleaner story emerged, one I felt worthy of working on. In fact, an entire plot line for a second book popped into my head, which is just making me even more optimistic that YES, MAYBE, PERHAPS I CAN DO THIS.

It’s anyone’s guess what spurred this about face. I don’t think it was the huddle-at-home lifestyle brought to us by Covid-19; as an introverted creative on the verge of being a shut-in, the pandemic’s barely dented my schedule.

What I do know is I can’t just write or even edit all day long. That’s not a dream come true for me, it’s a nightmare.

Happiness as a writer (for me - YMMV) is writing AND publishing. Writing AND marketing. Writing AND researching best practices.

Or to put it another way, writing AND not-writing.

Now, having just finished writing this, I feel the need to not-so-much for a while.