Writing IS Hard

I could just leave it at that. One singular sentence to sum up writing. Fits perfectly. Very apropos. But, no. There’s more. Lots more. It’s hard like getting out of bondage. Or a straight jacket. Or an insane asylum.

For simplicity, I’ll give you five reasons as a teaser.

Writers are artists. The canvas is blank until we cover paper with words. Magical, fantastic words that the reader uses to create a vivid picture in their mind. The creative effort is long. To say it’s painstaking doesn’t describe accurately the work involved. And, art takes time.

We punish ourselves. There’s stress. There’s sleeplessness because when we wake, we think of the goddamn story and tweak it at two in the morning. Or we create a character and develop her at three in the morning. Or we sit in a movie theatre and excuse ourselves to the restroom because we just got a great idea and need to peck it into our phone’s notes.

Why?

Because the story imprints our brain. It sticks with us long after the final words get written. Even after it’s edited and published, we wonder if it could have been better. What we coulda changed. We do this to ourselves because in some sadistic we, it’s how we thrive. And keep going to write again. Or…

We stress about writing. Or, we don’t write when we like and stress about not writing. And then we stress about the writing we’re actually doing. And when we write and jump to another work or social media, we stress about that because, well, WE’RE NOT FUCKING WRITING. But when we do write, you’d think the stress would go away, but then we stress about the actual goddamn writing and if it’s even any good. Then people ask us if we’re writing, and we answer yes, but think Mother of Christ, am I writing enough? And when people ask us for sample of our writing and we don’t have enough to give, STRESS. And we even stress about if we’re blogging enough. So, holy shit. *rips out a gob of hair*

Writing requires focus. I’ll be honest here, I’ve yet to meet an artist who has laser focus all the time. We I tend to jump back and forth in writing projects so yeah, there’s a few WIPs hidden on my Mac. Also, see the above paragraph. Now, where was… Oh yeah, focus.

Writing requires diligence. This is not to say that writers aren’t a diligent sort, but making the full commitment is well, a huge commitment. It takes time. It takes effort. It takes dedication. So yeah, the diligence thing is hard. And damnit, diligence takes persistence.

In summary, WRITING IS HARD. Very. Fucking. Hard.