You Should Write More

I recently finished writing the first draft of my first novel. This is not my first attempt at a novel. It’s my first since I tried to write one at age eleven. I am sharing in a series of posts a few insights I gained through the process in case it’s useful to you. They were revelatory to me, but that doesn’t mean you could have told me years ago and I would have listened.

Creative Inhibitions

As I brought up in my post about “winning” NaNoWriMo, I’ve been a writer practically since I learned to read. It has been my main creative expression. But that doesn’t mean I’ve understood it. I’ve had a complicated relationship with it, mostly because I projected all my insecurities onto it. I got good at building arguments for avoiding creative writing:

• I’m not a good enough writer
• I don’t bring enough value to literature
• I’m not marketable
• I don’t want people to think I’m writing about them
• I don’t want people to think I’m writing about me

The common themes here are fear of rejection because the writing is either too much a reflection of me, or not enough of me. So, fear of me.

To deflect from this insecurity I developed a series of strategies for avoiding writing:

• I’ll write when I have time
• I’ll write when I’m a better writer
• I’ll write when no one I love is left to read it
• I’ll write when it doesn’t interfere with anything or anyone else

This is not procrastination, it’s avoidance. I avoided the work because it’s painful; it’s not because of the hard work or effort. I’m no stranger to putting in the work. In my professional career, long hours and pushing through are part of the process. I have been perfectly willing to sacrifice my body, my emotional health, and my family for the sake of commerce.

My spouse, my children, my friends, and my mentors have been more than encouraging. They’ve promised to give me the time and support to tackle my creative writing. They’ve read what I have written and said they want more of it. They’ve said that I’m a good writer. I’ve spent more than 40 years trying to discourage them, outlast them, and prove them wrong.

Both Gift and Curse

I think I have strong empathy, and reading and writing reinforces that. But the flip side to empathy can be judgmentalism. Seeing myself through others’ eyes I can easily devalue myself. Compounding that is my experience with writing professionally. I’ve leveraged that internal negative voice to become a fast, clean first-draft writer. I can edit in my head and write decent content for business. 

It took me years even to recognize writing was more than a talent. It was a craft. Even though I thought I could get by on talent alone, I couldn’t help but want to improve. It rankled me when a boss would suggest that what writers did was somehow magic. “This is where the magic happens,” they would say and I’d respond, “People don’t pay for magic. Magic is intrinsic and effortless. Craft takes years of practice and training. People will pay for that. People expect magic for free.” 

Be Serious

So, while I insisted there were separate creative and professional worlds, I was kidding myself. I finally admitted that all work needs to be creative. In fact, the reason so much work is rubbish is that we tend to squeeze the creativity out of it as part of the process. My secret to (limited) success is that I couldn’t help but try to sneak some in. 

My last excuse for not writing was the impracticality of it as a vocation. I spent too much as a marketing consultant not to consider how to make writing a good business. You analyze the market. You target a growing potential audience. You look for lucrative contracts. In short, you commercialize your efforts to maximize your efforts and your profits – what all great writing has in common, right?

This was probably my most effective argument in talking myself out of writing. I could quickly take all the fun out of it. 

So, how did I conquer my fears, push through, and ultimately cross the finish line? In the next post, I’ll look at that and what writing brings to me as a practice.