“Someone come make me write my book!”
“Being a writer is 10% writing and 90% feeling guilty for not writing.”
I often see/hear sentiments like the above, and I’ve expressed similar thoughts. I have a theory about why we (or at least some of us) might love and dread writing: our love for GOOD stories.
A good story draws us in, compels us, and immerses us. We root for characters. We breathe, sigh, hide, and cry with them. Many of us writers love to create stories because we fell in love with them before we could do much else—whether it was through books, mouths, audio recordings, screens, artwork, or any other storytelling medium.
So when we write, we want to make that happen. We’re not trying to make the perfect story; most of us know (probably from stories) that perfection isn’t possible. But the process of crafting forces us to confront our failures over and over. It makes us see: This thing I’m making is not the story I know and love.
It’s hard to work through that. I love the story that’s playing out in my head, and all I want is to convey it to others. This, though, this horrid draft in front of me? I don’t love it. The disappointment is crushing. (This, by the way, is how you know you’re improving. You’re good enough to see the deficits.)
When you’re looking at a first draft, at scribbled ideas and outdated outlines, it looks more like ruins than a foundation. There’s no promise of what it can become. But the promise it does hold is this: If you keep going, it might not be what you envisioned. It might not even be better. But it will be different, and it will be yours.
For me, my love of stories drives some of my anxiety, but it also brings me back to writing again and again (even when I think I’m done). It tells me that I DO want them to be told, shared, and loved, just like the stories that inspired me. And isn’t that what love is? Accepting the parts that are harder to love? The messy, wretched process of drafting, revising, criticizing, and doubting on repeat deserves to be pushed through so I can get to what’s easiest to love: the work. The thing of it all. The finished story, and the people who will receive it.