Why is Writing So Hard?
(reposted from Grub Street’s Friday Five-O)
“Why is writing so hard? Does it have to be this hard?”
—Toshi Roshi
Short answer, Toshi: no.
Long answer: it is our irrational beliefs about writing that actually impede our progress more than say, an uncomprehending public, transitions in publishing, or a lack of spare time.
Inspired by Albert Ellis, who created Rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT), I have compiled the Seven Irrational Beliefs About Writing, which I have observed in other writers (as their developmental editor), and in myself as a writer.
Because it doesn’t have to be so hard.
Everyone needs to like what you like write.
Especially people close to you. I’ve been working on a project that my literary agent won’t represent, my business partner won’t work on, and my wife won’t read. Yet my experience while I am writing it is that it is “vintage” me. Who’s right? Does it make sense to talk about who’s right?
Critics need to be proven wrong.
If you don’t prove your critic wrong, does that mean that your work—and you—are worthless? Is it possible to participate in a conversation in which everyone has a piece of the puzzle? Or does someone’s effective critique of a part of your work necessarily invalidate the whole?
Rejection is a measure of either your inferiority or your superiority.
We have all heard tales of writers who collect their rejection slips, trying to prove by their eventual success that the agents, publishers, journals, etc. who rejected them did so out of ignorance. That seems like a lot of work. Could it not just be a matter of fit?
You need an editor to tell you what you should do.
You can use the talents of an editor or other beta reader to help you analyze your work, to recommend an adjustment to your structure, or to provide another experience for your writing to resonate with. Nobody can tell you what to do.
Your talent as a writer is static.
If this argument is extrapolated, then education, practice, and commitment will not substantially improve your innate gifts as a writer. If that is true, then writing stands alone among human endeavors as something you cannot get appreciably better at.
Success is finite: if someone else achieves it, you cannot.
Writers who would never feel jealousy when someone they know falls in love, or finds a job that suits them, or moves to a great town, can still find the capacity to resent another writer’s literary success. Yet success is not finite; rather, it is relative.
A piece of writing is never finished.
There is always something that can be done to improve a piece of writing, and it is your responsibility to exhaust every angle to make your work perfect while still admitting that it is not finished. But see, that’s not true…The End!
