One of the biggest things I see all writers struggle with is the idea that creativity has to be hard.
Sometimes I see this in the way a writer works. They might set themselves up on a schedule—trying to meet a high word count every day, for example—at which they are bound to fail. Or they beat themselves up mercilessly for the messiness and flaws that they see in their first draft. Sometimes it’s more hidden, and while the writer might be trying to stay cheerful on the outside while they meet all their rigorous writing goals, on the inside they feel horrible because their inner critic is lashing out at them for not being productive enough, or original enough, or just plain good enough.
When writers who are struggling turn to the online world of writing for help with these types of problems, they usually only find a lot of blogs and articles that reinforce the very feelings that are making them feel so bad about themselves. There is just so much stuff out there telling us that creativity is not supposed to be fun, that creativity is work and you have to treat it like a job, or that we should always have an eye on how productive we are. We should track our word counts, days devoted to writing, number of rejection letters, and that we should take pride in feeling beaten down and discouraged because, on top of everything else, growing a thick skin is also something that a real writer has to learn to do, even if it’s unbearably painful.
This is all complete nonsense. Continue Reading
