"Writing Is Hard" Is a Story We Tell Ourselves
One thing I hear writers say over and over again is that writing is hard.
Some say this like it’s a badge of honor. Others, an offer of commiseration. And sometimes, it’s more of a promise that a certain level of suffering makes a thing worth doing. As if ease is boring or leads to sloppy work.
I don’t actually believe any of that 100%. I think the notion that writing is hard is just a self-limiting belief, a story we need to ask ourselves about.
For me, writing is as often easy as it is difficult.
I think whether I experience writing as hard depends on a lot of things, not limited to:
the day
the piece I happen to be working on
how I’m feeling in general
whatever else is going on in my life
how I feel about what I’m writing
But more importantly, I think writing is easy based on the same things. And I think how we practice feeling about writing is actually more important than all those things combined.
If we regularly practice writing with the idea that writing is hard active in our consciousness, then we are in essence practicing writing to be hard. (I say regularly because once in a while will probably not tip the scales of your subconscious.)
If we regularly practice writing by forcing ourselves to write things we don’t like, or write when we don’t feel like it, without taking our resistance seriously and addressing it, we are practicing writing to be hard. And so writing becomes haaaarrrrrrddd. (I just tried pronouncing that and spit on myself a little.)
Likewise, if we regularly practice writing with the idea that writing is easy (or fun!) active in our consciousness, we are in essence practicing writing in a state of ease.
If we regularly practice writing when we feel interested, entertained or excited about writing, then again, we are practicing writing in a state of ease. (You could call it flow. Because that’s what flow is. Ease.)
Whatever thoughts and feelings you bring with you when you practice something become part of your experience of the thing.
I had a basketball coach in junior high who drilled into our heads:
“Practice does not make perfect. Practice makes permanent.”
I was never much of an athlete, but I got a lot better at layups that year because of his relentless focus that form and attitude led to ease. If he ever insisted basketball was “hard,” it’s not what stuck in my mind. I remember him saying that how you practice stays with you.
I don’t think writing is all that different. Practice does make permanent. The attitude and beliefs we bring to it set the tone.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t write at all when you don’t feel like it. There are a lot of reasons writers have to write on days when the flow isn’t flowing. We have contracts and deadlines and goals, after all. We can’t always be “on.” But we can choose our mindset. And our mindset matters tremendously.
We can choose the story we tell ourselves about how we feel about our writing practice.
I can already feel and hear resistance around that statement.
“But if I’m having a bad writing day, isn’t it important for me to honor my feelings?”
Well, yes.
But how are you honoring your feelings? Are you eating a pint of Ben & Jerry’s? Are you going online to find someone to complain with and still replying to comments three hours later after it’s all over? Or are you staying present as you close your document, taking a few deep breaths, and shifting gears into whatever else you have to do today?
Bad writing days happen to all of us. But we can choose whether we want to cling to the bad writing day and roll around in our displeasure and discomfort, or whether we want to accept it, release it, and come back fresh the next day.
This is one of the reasons why I rarely post about my writing progress online.
I know that a lot of new writers find comfort in online community. And don’t panic, I’m not trying to take that from you. I used to have a circle of writing friends that I reported to daily about my progress and my problems. It was imperative that I do this even when it was hard because it taught me how to write better. Challenge makes us grow. And even when they’ve reached a level of mastery, MANY writers continue to find comfort in what is essentially water cooler chat. But for others, too much water cooler chat creates more resistance than it resolves.
If you’re one of those people, you might feel regret immediately after posting about your bad writing day or sharing what feels like a puny word count. You might get caught up in drama about writing “rules” that you don’t want to follow or myths that you think are harmful to new writers. Or you might find yourself feeling resentful when someone posts a daily word count that seems out of reach for you. Or maybe you feel like it’s hopeless when someone else hits publish again (and again) and you’re still revising chapter six.
It’s okay if you don’t agree with certain writing “rules.” It’s okay to not feel inspired by other people’s progress or pace. All of that is normal. People have often told me I should feel inspired by someone who writes fast, and my inner reaction is still HELLLLL NO. I’m happy for them, but it’s not inspiring to me. I’m inspired by staying in MY flow. And you should be inspired by your flow, too.
Anyway, if you feel like I just dragged you. SORRY. I’m dragging my old self, too, just so you don’t feel alone.
Where I’m going with this is that I used to get worked up about how hard writing was. I was showing up all in my try-hard energy. Pushing and forcing and believing in the hardness of writing not as a healthy challenge, like a mountain with multiple trails that I was fit enough to climb, but as one that healthy climbers had actually died upon. And no, that didn’t inspire me.
What actually lights a fire under my butt is believing in writing as a creative process that is fairly predictable, and knowing that flow and resistance are both parts of that process. The ease or flow is not about there being no challenges. Ease is not passive. It’s about trusting the process and allowing MYSELF to handle the challenges that I’ll find along the way as I find them.
If I’m having a hard day, I know that I’ll bring that resistance to my process and I’ll adjust my expectations of my writing session.
If I’m in a stuck place with the project I’m working on, I know that’s probably resistance to the story itself, and I prepare to step back and ask big picture questions about the project. Do I need to research something? Is something wrong structurally? Is a character behaving out of alignment?
If I feel sick, I personally don’t compel myself to write.
If my family is not being respectful of my needs, that’s my signal to create some boundaries and communicate better.
And if I’m just not feeling my project at all? Sometimes I have to ask myself if this is what I should be writing right now. I have dropped entire projects because I realized they weren’t in alignment with who I am and how I want to show up in this world as a writer. And sometimes you start a project and realize you’re not ready for it yet and you set it aside for Future You to find.
Even the hard parts of writing are easier when you allow resistance and trust Your flow.
Wishing you the flowiest of writing experiences, even when it’s hard. (Especially when it’s hard.) And remember that how you allow yourself to think about hard things does matter because it becomes part of your experience of that thing. Practice makes permanent. If you don’t like the story you’ve been telling yourself about the challenges associated with your writing practice, YOU get to change that story for YOU and you alone.
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See you in the Zone,
Celeste