#process:compassion

Look, your writing doesn’t say anything about you.

I mean, it comes from you. But whether you write something good or something bad, it doesn’t mean anything. A story isn’t a sign. It doesn’t prove your talent or lack thereof.

A story is something you make, not something you are.

To return to a metaphor I used once: think about making pancakes. Sometimes you turn out an A+ pancake, and sometimes you burn the shit out of one. You make another one, they all go in the pile, and there’s always someone who enjoys the burnt ones. You would never take a single pancake and say it alone represents your pancake-making talent forever, or that it reveals how smart, interesting, or lovable you are. We can’t judge your soul by a pancake. It’s made of batter.

The most important thing I’ve learned in the last five years, as a writer and a person, is that problems I think originate in me often have mundane practical solutions.

When I hit a snag, I tend to attribute it to some inner deficiency. If I were smarter or a better writer or a better person, I could get around this. But nine times out of ten, it’s not my fault, it’s the problem’s fault.

Let’s take a problem I share with a number of you: I do my best thinking when I’m driving, but when I reach a place where I can write something down, it all vanishes. It’s because of my bad memory, I think. Or the ideas weren’t substantial enough for my brain to keep. A real writer wouldn’t have this problem.

Those beliefs kept me from seeing an obvious practical option: find a way to record those ideas while I’m driving. 

I resisted this for a while. My mind kept throwing up roadblocks because it didn’t want to change its habits. Fiddling with the voice memo app on my phone in the car was dangerous, for instance. But hey, Siri exists. I never use Siri - okay, so I learn how to set it up. If you don’t have a smart phone, you can get inexpensive digital voice recorders on Amazon, some of which are voice-activated. If you can only afford a cheaper one, start recording before you start driving.

My biggest obstacle was that I felt oddly embarrassed explaining my story ideas out loud, even if only to an empty car. So I practiced first. If I wanted the benefits, I had to push against my own habitual helplessness.

People often say, I want to write, but I can't.

Well, let’s break "writing" down a bit. "Writing" isn't one single activity. When you say I want to write, but I can't, what you probably mean is, I want to write, but I dread certain tasks I believe are necessary for writing. 

Guess what? You don't have to do those things. At all. 

So you want to write a story. Maybe you start one, or maybe you don't get that far. The point is, you hit a wall beyond which your anxiety refuses to let you go. You just...can't...face it. 

Whatever that wall is? Don’t do it. Ask instead, what can you do? You always have options. You always have a choice.

People rarely want to do anything if they’re forced to do it. The writing-advice blogosphere's obsession with self-discipline might help some people get going, but it makes others feel trapped. Those folks don't need to cultivate discipline, they need to cultivate freedom.

This is why "You shouldn't write if you don't want to" pisses me off. You do want to write, but a sense of obligation has crushed that desire so far down you can't feel it anymore. The only way to get back in touch with it is to stop making yourself do things you can't do. This doesn't mean giving up, it means doing what you can do instead.

Is it impossible to start writing at all? Okay, you can't do that right now. But you can probably open your writing app and create a new file. 

You've got a file open on your desktop. That's great, you can stop there if you want. But you might ask, could you start writing your story in it? Maybe you can't. Could you type a few random words and phrases into it that aren't related to your story? Maybe you can. 

Now let’s say you're looking at a document with some random words and phrases in it. Can you type one sentence on the next line that relates to your story? If you can't, there's almost certainly something else you can do. But if there isn't, stop. You can ask again later. You get to choose.

At every point, remind yourself, I don’t have to do this if I don’t want to, because there’s always something else I can do instead.

I’ve been advised many times to "break a task down into steps.” But when you make a list of steps, you still feel obligated to do all of them eventually, and from where you're standing, those future steps look very intimidating. That's not what we're doing here. Each action you take comes with no expectation that you'll do anything next. It does come with that possibility, but that's it. Who knows how you'll feel, what you'll be capable of, when you get there? You'll practically be a different person. 

You might have to get creative. Recently I had to write an email I couldn't face, and somebody said, "Well, can you write a fake version you'll never send?" I could. Once I'd done it, though, I decided it wasn't too bad, and the effort of sending it was so minimal I had no reason not to. 

Not all cases will be that easy. But the mere freedom to not do what you can’t do will help you see more alternatives. When I was depressed, I used to beat myself up for not getting to the grocery store. It turns out there are affordable ways to get your groceries delivered, but I didn’t even think to research them until I’d stopped blaming myself for being too lazy to leave the house.

If you’re going to write, you have to let go of the belief that someday, somehow, you will turn into a good writer.

I used to sit down and say “okay, gotta write now,” but writing felt literally impossible. That feeling, I now realize, masked another thought: “maybe this is the day, the day I become a new person who can actually write!” Part of me believed I couldn’t do anything to make this happen, but another part believed I could if I strained and struggled hard enough, and these two parts of me fought relentlessly. Of course, the whole thing was a sucker’s game: no amount of effort could make me into a different person. But I kept sitting down, hoping that somehow I’d pull a rabbit out of the hat this time, while secretly knowing I wouldn’t.

You can’t live this way. The fact is, when you write, it’ll be you writing. You as you are now, not a mythical future-you who writes so much better. This isn’t to say the real future-you will write exactly the way you do now. But you cannot wait for future-you to come into being. And you don’t have to. Present-you is good enough. If this were your last day on earth, you could still write something valuable. Stop looking at me that way. You could.

You know what this means? You’re not going to want to hear this, but...you have to take present-you, whom you might loathe, whom you’re ashamed of, who’s supposedly suuuuuch a bad writer, and let them write the story. You can’t hide from that boring, talentless, unattractive person you think you are. Because that person, believe it or not, has way more to say than the ideal person you hope you’ll someday become.

An excellent question, anon. I wish I could solve this one for myself!

The most useful suggestion I’ve received is to reframe working on your draft as being kind to yourself. You do want to do it, so when you do, you are giving yourself something good, even if it doesn’t feel great in the moment. 

At least for me, an aggressive part of me insists on treating writing as an obligation I’m fulfilling for someone else, and it’s hard to cultivate an attitude that I’m doing it all for myself, not just the rests but the writing as well. I think it can be done, though.

It will be easier to reframe writing as kindness toward yourself if you don’t just try to adjust your thoughts but express this attitude through action. So instead of always giving yourself permission not to write, maybe ask yourself gently to write just a little when you have the time. Maybe you let up on the deadlines for a while in favor of simply logging time writing. That would take the pressure off without letting you stop altogether.

@aurora-nerin wrote:

All of this is legit as fuck, but what’s weird, when i did ask myself: ‘’why are u terrified to write that next chapter that you been putting off for 3 months?’’ the answer is: I dont know! i dont have a fuckin clue. In my mind, it’s like, the chapter should already be mapped out when i sit to write, or i should have some idea of it and i dont. why not? Not having is ideas is probably what’s scaring me the most. The thought that ‘’see? you started something and run out of ideas, cause you cant write  a worthwhile story till the end!’’ that’s what’s my fear and, it’s like, a circle of misery: cant write cause dont know how to write. dont know how to write cause i too scared of not finishing the thing. cant finish the thing cause i cant write.

send help im gettin teary eyed around here, for real

Hello friend, I thought I’d give my reply to your note its own post.

Yeah, it’s a horrible Catch-22. (Is it? I’m never sure if I’m using that expression right. But you get the idea.) You don’t want to start until you know exactly what you’re going to write, but you can’t know exactly what you’re going to write until you’ve written it.

So first of all, this problem is very common and totally understandable, because from where you’re standing, if you don’t have ideas yet, it feels like you’ll never have them again. Some magical people can live in that space of uncertainty and think “it’s okay, ideas will come to me as they always do sooner or later.” But many of us don’t have enough faith in our abilities to tolerate that feeling.

A few things to keep in mind:

First ideas often aren’t great. You have to keep reminding yourself that they aren’t the only ideas you’ll ever have, and that sometimes you must drill down past the initial round of uninteresting ideas to get to better ones.

No ideas are written in stone. Just because you have an idea doesn’t mean you have to use it, and any idea you have doesn’t represent your abilities or potential. Words and ideas are sand paintings - you can wipe them away whenever you want.

Sometimes you will not know what the story is about until you finish a draft. This is a pain in the ass because then you have to rewrite it, but it gets easier if you remind yourself that the first draft was necessary to get to the ideas that will stick.

Yes, as you’ve seen, your mind will occasionally go blank. This does not mean you will never have another idea again. If you bluescreen, start doodling. Pursue a few ideas that don’t seem all that promising initially but that might lead you to ideas you actually like. Whatever you do, do something to lubricate the gears. It doesn’t matter if that writing isn’t dynamite, it’s just to get you moving again.

Have a little faith in yourself. Humans are terrible at predicting the future because we assume a current state of affairs will last forever. This is a known cognitive bias. Try to notice when it’s pouring lies into your ear.

(By the way: if part of what’s stressing you out is that you feel like your readers are getting impatient, you can always drop some kind of update: “look, I’m going through some shit so you’re gonna have to wait a little longer, hope you understand,” that sort of thing. And resist the temptation to be apologetic about it. Anyway, I dunno - that would make me feel better, I’m not sure about you. Just an idea.)

For a long time, I wrote like I was pulling a con. If I spun my story just right, my readers would never have to know how dumb and shitty I was. I would never have to know how dumb and shitty I was.

You may think you-as-you-are has no business writing. You might prefer never to write again than to let you-as-you-are write anything with your name on it. But you have to. I rarely say you “have to” do anything on this blog, but I am telling you now: you cannot move forward if you do not let that ugly, pathetic, shameful, secret version of yourself out onto the page. You cannot write anything good if you hide the person you dread you are.

You’ve gotta leave the house without your intellectual makeup on. Otherwise, you’ll believe forever that you’re hideous without it.

I can hear you objecting: you are special, which is to say especially bad, and if I knew you, the real you, I’d admit that yes, you should hide the real you. Well, guess what - your fear and self-disgust and belief that the real you has nothing to offer is not unique. Thousands, millions have preceded you, and all of them probably thought their awfulness was unique in the history of mankind too. If you’d be willing to tell them it’s okay to write without changing who they are, then you have to let yourself do the same.

I’m telling you that now. It’s okay. And it’s necessary if you’re going to write at all, to say nothing of writing well. This is the paradox: to write well, you have to hand the reins over to the version of yourself you believe is least capable of writing well.

It’s wild, actually. When you take off the mask, your writing gets more powerful. Less pretty, maybe, but more real. We are all worms crawling on the surface of a rock. When you let yourself speak as the worm, truth comes out. Writing is like love: you can’t do it if you pretend to be someone else. Even if you believe the real you is unlovable.

This isn’t about “write a shitty first draft and improve it later.” This is about letting go of shame. Do you sit in front of your computer, afraid to touch the keyboard lest the worst shit imaginable spill out and the whole world (and you) learn how stupid and talentless you are? Good. Let that shit out. Let the worst-case scenario come to pass. That is the most heroic thing you can do. If you do this - if you write the boring, stupid, hacky shit you’ve always feared you’d write - you’ve achieved something. If you can’t bring yourself to do it, tell yourself, “Well, Wrex told me to do it, so I have to.” You have my permission - nay, my command - to write the bad story you secretly believe is the only story you can write.

But Wrex, you say, I’m already doing that. Yeah, maybe, but right now, you think that’s a bad thing. You’re not doing it intentionally, and you’re doing it despite tremendous effort to do otherwise. I’m telling you to do it intentionally and to celebrate it. To be proud of it. To do it without shame. Don’t labor, don’t try, don’t think, just let that uncensored filth spill out. Then you will know that the worst can happen and you’ll still be alive. 

No matter how much you may hate what you wrote, you have acted with incredible dignity simply by being honest with yourself. Very few writers can say that - writers you might think are really talented. Sure, they can write words that entertain and dazzle people, but if you have faced what you hated most about yourself and let it out into the light, you have done something they were too afraid to do. And if you gave these allegedly shit-smeared pages to me, I could point out the value in what just looks like garbage to you.