So, writing’s a lot of fun, right? He asks this casually, in between chugging tea in the mornings and glasses of whiskey (responsibly) at night, pouring over binders, and files, and random google searches (at the moment it’s a lot about the classifications of demons, IBA official cocktails, and how to fight with a morning star), with a smile that implies he knows what the answer really is: That writing is fun like getting teeth pulled is fun. Except, it really is. I think it is. When writing, you get to create worlds, people, stories and plots, imagine (and hopefully someday experience) what your words can do readers, fans, followers. At your fingertips is the power to elicit the full range of human emotion, to imagine and live scenarios you never could yourself, to immerse people in moments never real and get them invested in people never born, to explore not only the worlds you create but our own through lenses innumerable. That’s all fun, right? We wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t.
Well, no. We would. Because writing’s also work.
It’s passionate work. Consuming work. But it’s still work. I’m clocking in at the moment for over 180k words written since the start of 2021, and that’s not for nothing. It’s a matter of structure, of schedule, of determination (Undertale references welcome). There’s an art to writing when you’re uninspired, and while I may not write every day (more on that in a moment), it’s always on my mind. You have the clichés, sure, of carrying a notebook around or (heaven forbid) the notebook app on your phone (mine emails me my notes, just in case), or stopping in the middle of doing something to write something down (so many random pieces of paper across my desk), or getting hit with story ideas or plot moments at the worst possible times.
Ask my coworkers how many times I’ve had moments of “Hold on- Just in my head for a second.”
But when it comes to sitting down and writing, that’s work. And I don’t even mean this as work for like, making money (I can guarantee you that I’m not. I’m really not. This stuff’s expensive.). But it’s time taken out of doing other things (at the moment, delaying my morning walk a little (but you better believe 9 times out of 10 that on that morning walk I’m listening to one of my writing playlists). I’m not the fastest writer in the world, although I am getting faster at physically typing. My actual writing time involves as much pacing around, jamming to music, getting lost on YouTube or Wikipedia, or getting food as it does doing actual writing. Nor do I even write every day (close to it).
But it’s still writing time, had to be given a certain amount of time a day. These days it’s usually in the morning for at least an hour, sometimes two. What exactly happens in that time is anyone’s guess (see above). I don’t feel as though writing every day needs to be physically writing. Sometimes it’s as much thinking about the writing, meditating or focusing on the plot and character problems at hand, talking issues through with friends and beta readers. Sometimes it’s listening to writing playlists, reading (the best way to improve writing beyond actually writing) or listening to others discussing media). But all this has to lead to writing, that’s the thing, and that’s the work. Languishing in the mind too long is a recipe for decay, in just about any aspect of life. In the case of my current project, it’s a glut of rewrites and additions, which actually moves pretty quickly. In the case of Freedom and Control, it’s more edits that can be frustratingly time consuming (second guessing word choices and sentence structure is the name of the game here).
Then, of course, there are the spans between that feeling of passionate determination and forceful, productive drive. The dead zones, sans inspiration or desire, or as apt to be filled with self-loathing (why oh why am I throwing a fantasy series out there just for fun, and THIS of all things?), and even more second guessing (yeah, there’s a lot of that). That’s when writing really becomes work, as much because it gets frustrating (writer’s block y’all, it’ll getcha), as because it gets time consuming. Sometimes it’s the literal lack of want to do anything, and then it’s the prior. Sometimes it’s almost physical, and inability to get your ideas onto paper even though they’re still loud as ever in your brain.
That’s where deadlines are kind of handy? There’re the little ones (here’s to trying for a haiku a day), and the big ones (get this and this project done by the end of this month, or, better yet, oh look there’s a new story on the way (June 26th!). They add to that sense of structure, while being generally nebulous enough to account for some flexibility. Once you learn your pace, large gaps of lacking inspiration and productivity aside, setting the goals becomes a little easier. The problem, of course, is that missing a deadline is on no one but you, and there’s no one out there who can enforce it. But you still have to treat it like work. It still has to get done, and unfortunately, no one else will do it. If you don’t, the story dies, or worse, is never born.
Your story never is, anyway.
I’ve mentioned before being both a romantic and a melodramatist (totally a word), right?
At the end of the day, of course it is fun. Writing. But more than fun is when it becomes a passion, when it becomes work, when it feels, even as you’re writing some of the most ridiculous stuff in the world, like it could be something. Not everything becomes something, and there are whole drafts, tens of thousands of words, of stories that I don’t think will ever see the light of day (sometimes killing your darlings means the actual stories, too.) I suppose the final most work like area of writing regularly is deciding just what exactly makes it out there, or what to give attention and effort to.
It’s as much about effort management as time management.
If I’m being honest there are about five projects I’m technically working on right now, two of which are getting eighty percent of my attention. There’s a story that has a lot of worldbuilding done for it that I keep telling people I’m just not ready to write. It needs more attention, more time, and maybe I need to be a bit of a better writer to do the idea justice. Nothing more annoying than reading something that does what you’ve tried to do better (also weirdly comforting? More on that in a later blog post.)
I need to get better at my work. We’re always improving, right? Always trying harder. And the fact is that when you’re done, when the work’s over, you can sit back and look at what you’ve created. There’s fun in that, too, and so much more. You’ve made art, some kind of art, and if it ever comes to anything, even for a single other person, it’s immortal. Better. It’s art that can live a thousand times over, different every time, yet (hopefully, but let’s be honest, never really) exactly what you wanted.
A product of your work.