TranScript:

Hello, just a quick heads up. This episode has a small amount of cursing in it. So if you’re with your kids and you want them to learn four-letter the words the old-fashioned way: from friends at school or the President of the United States, then maybe listen with headphones on. 

Welcome to Write Wrong: A podcast that talks about writing from the POV of someone who’s been doing it wrong for far too long. I’m Cortney Hamilton, and this is episode 006. Today I’ll be talking about: 

How crummy it can be to be a writer.

But first a practical tip. If you turn this podcast off within the next thirty seconds you get this: 

The 20-20-20 rule. Give your eyes a rest. After looking at your screen for 20 minutes, look at something 20 feet away for 20 seconds. This refreshes your eyes and helps prevent eye strain so you can continue to write and ravage them with enough electromagnetic radiation to make you want to do it all over again.  

And if you’re like me and forget to do it. Set a timer to annoy the hell out of you just as you’re deep into your writing flow. 

Moving on: 

Sooo writing: The answer to the question how can I give myself both tendonitis and a crushing sense of failure.  

In this episode, I want to talk about getting down on yourself. And before you turn off thinking this is just going to be a pity party or a pessimist’s take on a thing that we do even when we don’t have to do it, I want to assure you it’s got a bright side. 

But let’s address that writing is hard. It’s the rare person who can just sit down and type out thousands of words a day and have a novel wrapped up in three months. Stephen King, I’m looking in your direction. We’re not all that prolific. And that’s perfectly okay. 

And don’t get me wrong this is nothing like getting up at three a.m. to work construction until three in the afternoon. We’re not pounding concrete or digging trenches. And I don’t want to come off as an overprivileged person who sits at his desk and says, “Boo-hoo look at me, I have to write. Now get back to work, trench slave!” 

But let’s face it: writing is work. And if you’re a writer like me, you’re broke. Which means you have a day job or a night job (or currently want yours back if you’re listening and we’re still in the COVD crisis), or are a parent without a chance of getting any free time to write, let alone have a proper poop. Or perhaps You have a chronic illness and have thirty minutes of energy before you crash back into your bed and recover for the next twenty-three and a half hours. 

All of which means you’re writing in the hours you’re not doing all your other life requirements. But you still write. 

So, yes, we aren’t digging trenches, but that doesn’t mean we can’t acknowledge that sometimes waking up and facing the keyboard is like smashing your head against the wall while wearing a scarf of wet cats. As writers, we thrive in our imaginations a majority of the day, and those places can get real dark real quick, and this is even before you read that idiot Goodreads review numbnuts69 left about how your protagonist was stupid. “She’s perfectly not stupid, numbnuts69. Maybe look in the mirror and do some major self-reflection instead of taking it out on others.” 

And while sometimes I feel writing is the answer to the question: what would a thousand monkeys typing at a thousand typewriters do better than me, I have to find ways to balance my gloom, my doubt, and my resistance to this thing that I supposedly like to do. 

And if this doesn’t apply to you, great. I’m sure there are a baker’s dozen of a baker’s dozen of people out there who write blissfully, who put words on a page without any issues, who think of writing as a fun, snow-filled glissade down their daily life in a small town in Maine.  

But for most of us who wake up early, fight to get to the keyboard, download apps to keep us from the internet, binge-watch reality shows to escape reality, and pick at the dried skin around our nails only to look at the clock wondering how we lost an hour, being a writer can ruin your day. 

Just this morning, I woke up with this heavy feeling, a burden, a pressure to write. Because I’m not getting any younger, and, in an unfortunate coincidence, I also happen to be getting older too. And I’m not on my way to anything even close to what I would consider modest success, which at least entails having a published book that I can autograph for my fans and find a few months later at a local Goodwill.  

And I had time to write today, and I didn’t want to. I felt overwhelmed by all the projects I’ve been working on, had no motivation for any of them, and hopeless that any of them would yield interest from a reader, let alone from the person writing them. 

But I also knew that this feeling was temporary. That, even if I stayed away from writing for a month, I would come back to it, feeling that it was worth something. I know this from experience. Because I have not written for a month before, for years, actually, only to wind up revisiting my work when I was cleaning my hard drive and saying: “Oh my God, This is brilliant! Why didn’t I write this?” And also saying, “Who’s in these photos? Why did I keep these? I don’t even know these people.” 

And I don’t have time to wait. None of us do, really. Because no matter how industrious you think you are, things are going to happen in life to keep you from writing. 

Let’s start with work, (again, if you’re listening to this during the coronavirus, skip this part until things get better and we all have jobs we’re complaining about again), most of us have to work which can keep us from writing, because then we get home and we’re too tired to even think about our characters, which is one of my personal, favorite go-to excuses. 

But then there’s also sickness and not just a cold, but something that happens out of the blue and is much worse and happens to affect the entire world in a global pandemic. And it might not even happen to you. It might be your mom or brother or child. And it’s incredibly hard to focus on writing when someone you love is in pain. And even when they’re healthy, children can be intrusive. I don’t have any, but if I did, you can bet I’d use them as an excuse to not write at all. Also, to play more video games and wear Heelys.

Look, I’m not trying to bring you down, and I’ll get to some tactics I use to overcome my challenges. But my point is that waking up and not wanting to write is okay. Waking up and feeling despair about your writing is okay. Feeling hopeless about your writing is okay. Because it’s normal. We don’t always want to go to work. Or cook dinner. Or pick up the kids. But we do it because we know that it helps us pay the bills, or prevents us from starving, or keeps Child Protective Services off our back for once.

But ultimately, we do these things to be at peace, to be healthy, to be happy. And writing can do that too.

And, as I mentioned, the gloomy feeling is not permanent. And I think this is also a very important point to make. Our emotions, our feelings, our mindsets are not permanent. They change. Even our resistance to writing changes. On a moment to moment basis, this can change. I am not my feelings even though sometimes they take over, and I think I can squash them by eating the whole container of Cherry Garcia. 

The problem comes when we think this gloom is permanent because we can start a pattern in our writing that’s really hard to break out of. This can form what is called writer’s block, or, as the doctor inside me who self-diagnoses my own UTIs by Googling calls it: distal phalanx constipation. Feel free to hashtag. 

But being a writer is based on consistency. When you tell someone you’re a writer that’s what you’re really telling them. Not that you have a novel published. Or that you have an agent. Or when you have to explain your browser history to your husband. You’re telling them that you get up every day and sit down in front of a blank page and mine your heart and mind for something that’s authentic, something that you connect to, something you hope others will connect to. Consistency is what makes us writers. And, like going to work or picking up the kids, or cooking dinner, we do it even when we don’t want to or are down or only have the imaginary equivalent of tahini and lemons in our brain-cupboard. Because we’re writers. And that’s just what we do. 

I know there are conditions out there that keep us from writing that are far more serious than what I’m talking about. Things like Clinical depression, disorders that affect mood, physical challenges, and those things are far bigger obstacles that should be diagnosed, handled by health care professionals, and mitigated by knowing our own capacity for what one is capable of. But sometimes, I just wake up in a bad mood, and just thinking about opening up my manuscript that day makes me want to go back to bed.  

Even if I overcome the resistance and work on the novel, I can often overestimate my limitations, looking for any excuse to stop. And I have to push through those moments. Because that’s the other thing about the gloom, you think you got it conquered for that day or that hour or that paragraph, and it comes back on a whim.

And even if I try to push through and fall short, I always have tomorrow.  As long as I’m consistently sitting down and writing, or trying to write, then I’m doing the work necessary to get through this moment. But I’m also practicing something very important: Fighting the resistance to not write because I don’t feel like it. 

If I didn’t write every time I didn’t feel like writing, then I’d be not-writing at least three hundred days a year. More, in a leap year. Maybe I’d have a first draft of a short story written in that year. Which would be fine if I was immortal, but I happen to be on a strict timeline of not my choosing. And if I give in to that feeling to not write now, then it’s easier to give in to it the next time. Because giving in to resistance is like that friend you didn’t want but hangs out anyway because you were too polite to tell him you didn’t want to be friends in the first place. He’s always gonna show up because you’re all he’s got. 

And it’s a practice to not give in. I pretty much have to do it every other day. Because I can’t consistently conquer the voices of resistance if I’m not practicing fighting those voices. And it’s hard. Even though we’re just trying to put our imaginations in a form that doesn’t make us look like we should be under house arrest and monitored by the NSA. But it’s worth it because even if we’re not writing the next Pulitzer Prize winner, even if our book is about dismembered cadavers—you know, but in a fanciful way—we’re engaging with our creativity, and to engage with it allows us to bring meaning to our lives, to be able to ask questions about topics that touch on existence, and morality and consciousness, to explore how we as human beings work, even if we’re just erotically tantalizing our masturbatory tendencies by writing characters based off a teen-vampire series. 

And it can take its toll. And to ignore that is to disrespect the gloom and despair we feel, And you heard me right, disrespecting the gloom and despair. Because it is real and can affect you. And if you acknowledge it and allow it to be there then, ultimately, I think it will leave a lot faster than when you ignore it.

Because we’re too quick to judge ourselves and dismiss the resistance as being lazy or being a hack, or brushing off writing all together with a ‘why bother’ invalidation that only serves as a coping mechanism, allowing us to stuff our loathing into a place only our spouses get to witness when we’re mindlessly screeching at them over something trivial like misplacing the car keys. “No, you stop yelling, Suzy. I’m not yelling. I’m whispering with emphasis!”

But judging yourself never helped anyone. Let alone you. You’re a writer. Not because you’ve published. Not because you signed with an agent. Or because you have ten thousand Twitter followers. It’s because you sit down and write. Every day. 

Look, this feeling I had this morning, I wake up with it from time to time. I used to wake up with it more frequently, and I gotta tell you it kept me from writing for years. 

So, what do I do when it comes? 

First thing is: I verbalize it. I’ll sit in front of my computer and say out loud: “Writing is hard, today, damn it. What I’m doing is not easy. And that’s okay.” It helps to acknowledge it in the moment and not get caught up in our past. “Well, it was easy yesterday. Why isn’t it easy today? That jagoff Stephen King writes a novel every three months. Why can’t I?” And, I know, you’re not a jagoff, Stephen. It’s just a therapeutic release. You’re an inspiration. You’re a national treasure. Don’t be so sensitive. 

Even with cathartic cursing, it’s still hard. And to admit that is to at least give the task of writing its weight and to know that it’s a dynamic activity. It’s not static. It’s not the same every time you sit down. It’s like a tiger in a magic show. One day it’s jumping through hoops of fire. The next, it’s eating your face off. But this makes it exciting because that means it’s alive and you know that it can be tamed for your godless purposes. 

Second thing I do: I allow the feeling to be there inside, but I don’t cozy up to it. Instead, I try to observe it. Look at it like a scientist would. Or, the way a writer would as if the feeling was sitting on the bus and I was watching its movements. The way it talks or quietly stares at me through dark sunglasses. 

Let me break that down a bit more…

Let’s say I’m feeling gloom. Seems to be the word of the day anyway.

I’ll close my eyes and first find out where this feeling of gloom is? And it doesn’t have to be gloom; it could be anger or resistance or desperation. Doesn’t matter. Where does it physically rest in my body? For me, it often rests in my chest. And it can be black and syrupy and viscous. It often tightens my stomach, and I’m not even aware of it until I actively give it attention. 

And I break it down further if I can: Does it have a shape? Does it have a smell? How does it change as I sit here? Is it anywhere else in my body? Could be in my sinuses or my little toe. And I check in with other parts of my body going from bottom to top to see if it’s hiding anywhere else. 

And once I find out where it is, I observe it. Sometimes I’ll name it’s characteristics or what it’s doing in my body. For example, I said it felt black and syrupy and viscous. So I’ll just say that to myself, often out loud. “Thick. Syrup. Dark. Dark. Muddy.” And I’ll just keep repeating how it feels for a few minutes, and I’ll see if it changes.  

And sometimes it changes. Sometimes it dissipates. Sometimes it stays there, unmoving, glaring at me. But what this process does is depersonalizes the feeling. I’m no longer associating the feeling as me. This helps to stop thinking about myself in judgmental terms. “I’m a hack. I’m no good. Why do I even bother? Why am I always like this?” 

It stops the judgment and allows me to step out of the feeling and gain some perspective. Which helps because then I can ask it questions like: “Why are you here? What do you want from me?  Where did you come from?”

That’s right, I can treat the feeling like it’s a character. And the great thing is that I can actually turn this into a writing exercise. Have a conversation with the gloom. And see if it answers back. I’m often surprised at what it tells me. 

Three: Now, if I’m feeling gloom, and I’m trying to write through it, and the judgment just won’t go away. I’ll tell it to go away. Literally. 

Like your racist uncle at Thanksgiving, sometimes the judgment overwhelms the room. One extreme measure I do is to get aggressive with it. Simply, any time I sit down to write, and the voice comes up: “You suck. You’re no good. Why you doing this, loser?” Etc. I tell it to ‘fuck the fuck off!’ Excuse, my fucking french. But I’m serious about this. 

I’ll get mean. And usually, I find that, at first, it goes away for a few minutes and then the voice comes back and immediately, before the judge can even finish a sentence, I’m yelling at it. Now, I’m usually saying this in my head. But there have been times I’ve said it out loud. On a separate note, I want to apologize again to the checkout person at Safeway. I really wasn’t talking to you. I was cursing at my judgment.  

By the way, this can work for any judgment in your life, not just writing. 

Four. So, maybe I’ve overcome the judgment, and I’ve sat down to write, and it’s just not coming. It’s like the day started off with a clogged toilet, and I dropped my favorite mug, and now I’ve cut my foot cleaning it up, and I haven’t even had my coffee yet.

First and foremost, if I’m working on a novel, I’ll give it a good thirty minutes to get into it. If that doesn’t work, if I just can’t do it then I’ll stop writing on that project. And I’ll sit back a moment and say to myself, “It’s okay.” And I’ll listen and see if the muse is pointing me to someplace else. 

And usually it is. I’ll do something like: Go back to my outline for the novel and make sure I have everything in place. Or I’ll Work on character needs, wants, and relationships. I might imagine different scenes, their settings, the possibilities of what could happen. 

If nothing is flowing for that novel, then I might brainstorm new story ideas. Or do something more practical, but still necessary like writing a query letter. Or work on my bio because, yes, you’ll need a bio both for your query and for your eventually published book or website or Pulitzer commemoration. 

If none of that is working then I might just do research. Read a book related to my novel, whether something in the same genre, or a book on writing, perhaps by an author that rhymes with Cheaven Sting. I might work on my website or research how to get a website or look up what’s a domain name. And if all else fails, I might engage people on Twitter, telling them how I can’t write today no matter what I do.

Okay, I haven’t really done this last one, but I’ve seen others do it, and I’m surprised how many sympathetic people are out there, and it makes me feel better to see that. 

Because becoming a published author, much like being President, entails so much more than eating a whole bag of Cool Ranch Doritos while staring off into space, and wondering how to destroy the windmills giving everyone cancer. And there are many things you can do that contribute to you as an author that aren’t actually writing. They aren’t as fun, but they’ll definitely feel constructive when you’re stuck. 

And if you are stuck writing, sometimes it’s best to just walk away. Take the day off. Give yourself a break. But do it without judgment. Because judgment never helped anyone. It barely helps people in a court of law, let alone when you are both the judge and the judged.  

If you think of writing like practicing, then today is just one practice in a thousand days of practicing. Some practices are harder. But the only way to know if you’re a good writer is if you keep writing.

That’s it for this one. Visit me on my website Cortwrites.com. That’s C-O-R-T writes.com and tell me how your judgment has tried to control you. Or tweet me a meme of your judge. And check out my links and show notes. Also, if you do like this podcast tell your friends, tell your family, tell that stranger who strikes up a conversation with you from 6-feet away and also please leave a review on iTunes, because it lets people know I’m here and apparently, if you do, I get to meet the cyborg version of Steve Jobs in person.  

And I leave you with words from Mickey Mantle. It’s a longer quote with a bunch of numbers, but bear with me, fellow math-dodgers, because it applies. He said: 

“During my 18 years, I came to bat almost 10,000 times. I struck out about 1,700 times and walked maybe 1,800 times. You figure a ballplayer will average about 500 at-bats a season. That means I played seven years without ever hitting the ball.”  

Thank you, Mickey. And in your face, self-judgment! 

So keep swinging. Keep practicing. Keep trying.  Even on the hard days. Even on the judgmental days. Even when it’s not technically writing words but doing something that contributes to your writing. Because it all moves you forward. 

And write. Write, my friends. Write like you’re saving a baby from a burning car. Because that baby is your novel and that car is time.