There’s nothing easier than writing.
You need time, and a place, and something to write with, and on.
Obviously, as in all things, it helps to be rich, and un-persecuted, and we all know about the stunning percentage of artists and writers who turn out to be dependent upon patronage of one sort or another for much of their careers, but let that go for now.
Write. You don’t need to get a green light from a major studio; you don’t need to license IP; you don’t have to convince angel investors or VC or banks that what you are going to write is worth writing.
There are no auditions, or job interviews.
Entire novels are now being written on smartphones by people crammed into mass transit who can barely wriggle their thumbs.
And yeah, for people under stress, people in debt, people in tough situations, finding the special kind of mental energy and resolve to do this can be elusive, but…
But lets’ face it a lot of people who call themselves writers, a lot of people who want to write, have plenty of time and plenty of space within which to do this and they still don’t.
Why?
I went to Clarion 20 years ago with a man named Eric Nylund, who had the distinction of walking into the workshop with a finished novel already picked up by a major publisher.
As the class got to know each other, in the endless conversation that roils at the fringe of any writing retreat or workshop, the subject of wannabe writers came up, and what Eric would say to someone who asked:
“I want to write more, but I don’t have the time.”
Eric would ask, “Do you have a television?”
They would say, “Yes.”
“Throw it out the window. There’s your time. You’re welcome.”
Fast forward twenty years and television no longer feels like the major culprit. Social media, web-based video and commentary and imagery, is the muffin of distraction, and TV is like hunks of chocolate or nuts or crack cocaine sprinkled through that matrix.
And here I am. Not writing, really, but writing about writing, for ten people, now; maybe a hundred people, eventually. Or maybe a million, if I were to, oh, I don’t know, get off this thing and write something wonderful.
What are the chances of that? Zero, if I don’t get off. Non-zero, if I do.
Which is a long, long, round about way of saying that the only thing stopping you from writing is you.
You are afraid that creating a lot of mediocre crap that nobody wants to buy or read will be a greater waste of time than fucking around doing something else. You’re afraid that this waste of time is somehow more tragic than wasting time more honestly, doing time wasting stuff that everyone agrees is a waste of time.
You’re afraid of disappointment and rejection. You’re afraid of small success. You’re afraid of bad reviews. You’re afraid of revealing things about how your mind works in your fiction that might prove that you’re a bad person.
Two things work to get past this, I think. Well, three.
Assume your success lies somewhere down the road if you don’t stop.
Be in the moment and enjoy your process. Writing as its reward.
Assume you are totally doomed and do it anyway, out or some twisted contrarian impulse, for some tiny number of friends or work shoppers, or for your own idiot pleasure. Give into dreams of glory now and then. Switch back to doom mode every time you get rejected. Lie in the bed and curse your fate and hate yourself for being a loser and then get up and do it all again.
That third mode sucks ass, by the way. That’s what I do.
Click into my bibliography. “Look at this poor son of a bitch” (Jim Kelly referred to me this way when I was talking about dieting, but it’s not a bad description of me generally)
This poor son of a bitch has sold stories to Asimov’s (10) Analog and F&SF (more than one each, to those places.)
You can write. You can write in one of those three ways. Even in that most awful of ways, mine. You can succeed with all three ways. If my bibliography looks like success to you.
You can do the thing.
It’s the easiest thing in the world… to do badly.
And the easiest thing in the world to aspire to do, to pretend to do, and not do enough to really be doing it.
So let go. Let go of expectations. Fall in. The secondary creation calls out like young love on a cool summer night. The universe you own, or the one that owns you is out there… waiting. It wants you. The world inside. Shrink into it, fight the monster spider with the needle and plunge between the atoms and alight on a tiny worldlet inside a single atom and set up shop.
You’re a God there. You can do anything.
Now get to work.
This is way to big to tattoo on my forehead but i’m printing it up and sticking it on the wall- above my TV, the door to the basement, the door to my bedroom and the entry to the kitchen and office.
I wrote this because I have to keep telling it to myself, too.
The good news, and bad news, is that lots of writers have this feeling all the damn time. More good and bad news is that many learn how to write anyway… without being able to change their modality much.
Accepting the ambiguities moves you toward just enjoying process, or being in process without consciousness, which is a flow state, which is for most a form of happiness.
I’m getting there. I hope every writer I admire has a similar story to this, if you don’t mind me sharing a bit:
I had a chance (still have a chance) to make a little money doing some light business writing. I’d done it before and worked out an idea, pitched it and sent, I guess, my 4th or 5th draft to make sure I was on track.
I hadn’t worked with this editor before but a friend recomended her and we hit it off..
Her notes on the drafts were easily as long as the draft so I had work to do. I started from scratch and spent another few weeks on it and sent it in. The critique I got back was heartbreaking, although not unkind. I’d missed the point of her edits, I went entirely in the wrong direction, I’d taken the fun out of the piece. Basically I’d blown it. I agreed to try again, the editor showed real patience and encouragement but it wasn’t in me anymore.
I tried for another month to get it together but I didn’t believe I word I was writing. I mean that literally. Every sentence felt like a lie I couldn’t support and it was crippling.
That was exactly a year ago and I haven’t been able to follow anything up since.
I’d never felt such a sustained challenge to even my desire to write, to say nothing of my skill or (and I say this ,ovkingky) confidence.
Still working through it, I liked your affirmation. I’m trying to get there.
Business writing is hard, it’s a very tight box. I’ve done it, and had my agent explain how I was doing it wrong, and then I fixed it, but all critique hurts like CRAZY. The ability to feel that pain means you can get better if you keep going. The only people I know who are… hopeless… are the ones that refuse to accept criticism.
That said, take in too much, take it too deeply, take it from the wrong person, take it too personally, and crits can stop you dead.
Most people find they need to mode shift, from creator (joyful, confident) to craftsmen (obsssed with nuts and bolts) to critic, worried at a higher level, and if you get stuck on one mode it will stop you for a time.
The good news is that pros who write every day have some days when it all feels like a lie, and other days when it feels like they’re a transcribing a telephone call from God, and when they revise the work… t hey can’ tell the difference, between the days when they knew they were great and the days when they knew they sucked.
So you gotta let go of the story of you the writer writing this thing and what happens to the thing; that’s an ingrown hair.
It’s best to do writing feedback face to face, and its best to work on someone elses stuff and have them work on yours.
Then you are forced to practice what you preach.
You both are.
A crit can say, ‘you’re not doing this right,’ but if the person can’t do it themselves, you have to be careful about taking all their advice, because _they aren’t doing it either_.
Mostly, you listen to people saying what the piece did to them; you then look at your intents, then you keep working. You don’t have to know how you will fix what is wrong. Because your subconscious heard that stuff. It’s working on it. You write, you share, you listen, you hear, you write.