The Misery of Writing

I would describe Poe as haunted more than miserable. I think Lovecraft was miserable, but he was struggling with mental illness.

Perhaps part of the confusion is that pain is one of the stepping stones to great art. Some people cultivate their pain out loud to improve their art. That can be hard on the listeners, but perhaps useful for the artists.

As writers we know that the way help readers connect with our characters is to make the characters suffer. Perhaps the miserable writers just want people to connect with them.

 

As much as I hesitate to agree with Jabrosky, I do find that the most difficult part of writing is rewriting for an audience. First I say everything I want to say, and then I have to make sure it's comprehensible to everyone else, and half the time folks still don't get what I'm on about. I have to keep trying, or it defeats the purpose, but I do wish sometimes that I had an easier time explaining myself.

 

Yeehaw! Chainsaws are cool, yeah!

-Until you get to work with the bloody two-stroke bastardness, chain-slipping annoyingness of the things.

Yeah, writing is like that

 

My first instinct was to agree with this, but then my natural inclination to play devil's advocate got me wondering...

Let's just say for a moment that Book X was definitely going to be a big success (loved both by critics and the rest of the world). I reckon you could tell a few things from the first ten pp of the first draft: first off, whether the author had an engaging voice and was able to put words together. Second, you could tell if there was the germ of a good setting and premise, and finally - and most crucially - you could definitely tell if you wanted to read more.

I've told the story of my first acceptance many times - but in a nutshell, I was struck one day by a really powerful idea. So strong, I literally couldn't wait to start writing and was into it immediately (after 15 years of writing and ten years of rejection). When I had just 30 pp of the draft a friend pestered me to see it so, with some reluctance, I gave it to him one Sunday afternoon. The next morning at work, he rang and was absolutely raving to me about how good it was and that it was definitely going to be a huge hit. In fact, it was his enthusiasm that really fired me up after that (my first ever fan) and I found myself churning out the pages so that my friend could read it chapter by chapter. When I had about two thirds of the draft I decided to show it to a publisher, and the first publisher to see it said yes.

So I reckon you can tell a bit about the first pp of a draft, but to be fair, the quote above would be right 99.99% of the time.

 

I know someone who is like this. He claims himself to be a writer but he actually hasn't written a story in months. So...because I sometimes have a hard time keeping my opinions to myself...he ended up offended when I told him that, in order to be a writer or get anywhere with it, one had to write more than just once every few months. He claimed that he just wasn't inspired.

You know what? Sometimes I'm not inspired to write either. But the drive to create something to share with others is so much stronger so I make time for it and force myself to do it even when I'm not in the mood. I'm getting off topic here but there is something to be said for pushing one's way to the end of a story.

 

Writing doesn’t make me miserable. Not writing, not having written, not being where I want in my writing, that may frustrate me to no end, but the actual writing? No, never. The stories I have, that I want to get from my head to the page, they mean everything to me. Writing is the one thing I really don’t think I could ever get up, because I don’t think that I could ever not think about the stories and concepts and ideas.

Never could not think, What If?

And writing allows me to explore those.


Now, as I said, not writing makes me miserable, and I never realized just how much so until a couple of years ago. We did some major renovations (gutted the house, really) and everything got packed away. Including my writing and drawing stuff. Even after the months of renovations, the box gathered cobwebs in the attic.

It stayed there for about a year, in part because of work and the house and so much else going on that I never got back to pulling it down. Sometimes I'd pull out a notebook and start writing, but it never got very far and I was unsatisfied with it.

I felt... itchy. Raw. Frustrated and miserable, and I honestly made the people around me miserable. Sure, I had books to read, but it wasn't enough.

One day, going up in the attic to get something else done, I saw the box again and pulled it down. I opened it, and read through and looked at everything. Even the silly things I'd done as a teenager.

It felt like something inside me had broken lose, like when I'd packed away the box I'd mentally packed away creating, too.

So, no, writing does not make me miserable.

 

Hi,

I'm going to agree with Guy. Writing's great. No issues at all with it. It's the rest of the stuff that goes with publishing that brings you down. Editing for a start is Dante's ninth circle of Hell. Publishing, doing covers, marketing (not that I bother with it much) all of that stuff I don't need. That's why I suppose trade publishing still appeals despite all the other negatives.

Cheers, Greg.

 

Oh gods, no. Misery is definitely NOT required. Writing does not have to be hard. It's as much craft as it is art, and can take time to hone and build, but it definitely doesn't have to be hard. And, really, if you've lost the joy of it (or never had it to begin with), then what's the point? There's a difference between journal writing, non-fiction writing, and fiction story telling. There's also a difference between difficult, and challenging.

Rule #1: It has to be fun. If it's not fun, you're probably doing it wrong.
Rule #2: If you're not having fun, see Rule #1.

 

It may depend in part on how seriously someone takes their own writing.

In case no one else here has noticed before, I am much more productive as a visual artist than a writer. I draw a lot more often than I write, and I've finished many more drawings than stories. Maybe this is because, ironically, I invest a lot more in my writing than drawing. Drawing for me has always been a hobby, so I approach it with a more laid-back attitude that doesn't fret so much about final quality. On the other hand, I want my written stories to be as good as possible so I can make money from them. Ergo, I stress out a lot more about the quality of my writing than I do about my visual artwork, so in the end I don't get as much done in the literary field.

Not that I'm necessarily recommending that writers adopt a lazy hobbyist attitude towards their craft. It might be good for productivity and maybe remove some stress, but it won't make your stories actually good.