Writing comes easy some days but most days it feels like I'm pressing my face against a hot burner. I know as soon as I wake up -- it's a good day when I sit down to work without thinking; it's a bad day when the computer glowers at me from my writing desk and I pull the covers over my head and cry.
I cry a lot over writing -- I yell and kick things and grit my teeth and pull my hair. I never give up. I sometimes spend entire days staring at my work on the computer screen -- I'm lucky if I go to bed one paragraph ahead of where I was in the morning. That's nuts -- I know it is -- but I keep on doing it, because persistence will eventually deliver a good writing day or maybe two or three.
The bitch is, when I come off a string of what I thought were awesome writing days and decide that everything I did was shit. There begins the process of rewriting from every point of view so I end up with multiple versions of the same chapter narrated in different voices -- not productive at all.
Then I contemplate for long stretches -- in the weeks or months that separate good writing days -- why I write at all. It makes me completely insane, and I'm crazy enough when I'm not writing. But I have this story in my head and it talks to me and keeps me up at night. I'm afraid it will kill me if I don't get it all down on paper. So why can't I purge it? Why does it fight me?
I took a break for a couple of days last week, and watched some daytime TV, which consists of a lot of talk shows featuring crazy people and drug addicts with whom I share a lot in common.
I have this compulsion when I'm writing to make every sentence perfect. I can't stop myself. I know you're supposed to create first and edit later. I've tried all the tricks -- taping a blank sheet of paper to my monitor, making my font white ... I can't write like that.
All I can do is believe -- believe that I will write this story before it kills me; believe that one person other than me will want to read it when I'm finished.
FYI
If your a writer like me who suffers occasional bouts of my-writing-is-shit syndrome, check out the Insecure Writer's Support Group.
FYI
If your a writer like me who suffers occasional bouts of my-writing-is-shit syndrome, check out the Insecure Writer's Support Group.
That's why I write so slow - I'm a perfectionist and ponder every sentence as I write. And I know it's best just to slam the story down on paper and deal with revisions later (which I actually enjoy) but I don't always do that.
ReplyDeleteThanks for participating in the IWSG!
"But I have this story in my head and it talks to me and keeps me up at night."
ReplyDeleteThat is me all over. I sometimes struggle with the editing process but to not write at all is something I can't even contemplate and I can't do one without the other.
Thanks for your support on my blog!
im opposite alex.. i dont write slow... i write fast to get it all out, then i go over and edit... that way, if i dont like it at the end of the day, it doesnt kill me to delete it
DeleteDid you always write fast? How do you keep the editor at bay? Self control is a weakness of mine.
DeleteNew follower from IWSG. If you haven't already you might want to try nanowrimo where the point is to get most of the story down. The focus on word count shuts that internal editor right up. Of course, that isn't until November so for now remember you have to know the whole story before you know for sure if something doesn't work.
ReplyDeleteNanowrimo -- thanks I will look into that. And thank you, THANK YOU for following.
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