Craft of Writing: Brutal Honesty.

Dear Reader,

I've struggled all day to summon the will power to type this post. I am going to be honest with you, I'm having a hard time finding joy in my work. The old adage about 'Get a job you love and you'll never work a day in your life.' is trite garbage. I try to seek out the joy in my writing and the joy in life at large. Being someone with a truckload of baggage from a hard lived life as I endured brutality when I was younger, tragedy as I've grown older, and the general misery that comes from life's numerous insults, joy is a fleeting thing.

The thing that powers me forward when I can't find joy in my writing is grim determination. I have a whole world inside my head. Writing it down and telling my stories is the only way to get it out and make room for other stuff. I have days where I am terrified that I am going to never finish writing out the story I'm working on. I have days where I am convinced I am going to die before I finish writing the first series set in this world. On those days, I force myself to sit at the keyboard and hammer out words.

I had a therapist tell me that this wasn't healthy for me. They said that if I wasn't enjoying myself, I shouldn't be doing it. I couldn't get them to understand that if I didn't write then things didn't work right inside my head. I'd be more depressed and anxious. I'd be unable to focus on other tasks until I worked on my current project. It was just something I couldn't get them to understand because the idea that this created incredible pressure inside me that had to be eased through expression was alien to them.

On my bad days, like today, I am tempted to delete everything and just give up. The words of the therapist haunt me on these days. This is not something I do for fun and joy. There is fun and joy in it on the good days. But this is something I do because it is a crucial part of who I am. I am a novelist. I am a blogger. I am a journal keeper. I am a (frustrated) poet. I am a writer. I can't stop writing any more than I can stop breathing. The really bad days, when I don't get any writing anywhere done, I feel awful and like there is chaos inside me.

If writing is your hobby and it doesn't give you joy, it is ok to set it aside. If writing is your profession and it doesn't give you joy, I empathize with your plight. If writing is a single minded goal that you have had since a young age and has become an integral part of your persona and it doesn't give you joy, I am right there with you in the trenches today. Don't give up on yourself. Pick up the pen. Write one line, even if it is a two word sentence of "Fuck this." because some days that may be all you can accomplish. It doesn't matter how much you do. What matters is that you do it and you don't give up.

The only way out of writer's block is to push through it. Some times you can penetrate gently like a thin trickle of of water and wear it away bit by bit. Other times, you just have to hammer at it with a chisel until you've carved a path through it. If you're lucky, inspiration provides a truck load of dynamite and clears away a good chunk of it.