“A writer—someone once said—is a person for whom writing is difficult.”
– peptalk from Lev Grossman, during Nanowrimo
A writer with real genius makes writing a book look easy. When you read the book, you don’t feel all the blood and sweat and tears the author poured into the manuscript – you just follow a good story. Which leads to a persistent belief of writers that writing itself should be easy too. That, when the words just aren’t flowing, something must be wrong with you, as a writer.
I always get discouraged when writing gets difficult. Sometimes ideas just flow, and you know what you want a story to be – but when you sit down and write it, you just can’t squeeze out the words. Every sentence is agony, and you just think, at this rate, this novel will take ten years to finish. And then you give up.
But writing is difficult, and that’s okay – you are a writer as long as you keep stringing one word after the other. Not because you find it easy to do so. But because you keep trying to do it. (And it’s always comforting to know “real” writers don’t define themselves by how easily the words flow for them either.)
So I’ve got to break out of my procrastination funk I’ve fallen into since finishing my NaNoWriMo novel! I’ve barely written anything (because Christmas is so busy, I told myself), and haven’t edited anything at all. So hopefully I can do better!
My writing goals for this year:
- type and edit my Nanowrimo novel, and decide whether it’s worth showing the world or not
- write something new
- edit and publish some old stuff that I feel pretty sure is worth publishing, but which I haven’t gotten around to yet
How about you – any writing or reading goals for the new year?
“I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.”
Hmm... 