I got an email from a person about the difficulty of writing:
It feels overwhelming to sit and do. Writing is daunting; mostly I sit and stare...
It is. One does. I do.
I myself have been a writer for over two months now, and I’ve never gotten past how difficult writing can be sometimes. Most of the time? One thing I’ve learned along the way is that a lot of writers feel that way, and they love to write about THAT. Writing which I love to read, and I do, because maybe somebody out there somewhere will have a solution for me. I’m kind of addicted to reading what other people say about writing. I have shelf upon shelf of books that contain all kinds of writing about all kinds of writing, and I’ve read them all, and reading them has done one good thing and one bad thing for me.
The good thing is, it has slowly, over time, with extensive research and study, upon reflection and with careful consideration, become clear that I am not the only one who has difficulty with writing. My difficulty might be worse than other people’s, probably is, certainly I feel it more personally, it can’t be as hard for them as it is for me, but they have difficulties too. And they have thought about those difficulties, and the craft, in ways that fascinate me endlessly.
The bad thing is, all that time I spent reading about writing was time I spent reading not writing. Good excuse!
As it turns out, the only way I can get to writing sometimes is to accept that it’s hard, and do it anyway. I remember years ago listening to an interview with Jerry Seinfeld, and he mentioned something that happened early in his career when he was having trouble just sitting down and writing:
One day I was watching these construction workers go back to work. I was watching them kind of trudging down the street. It was like a revelation to me. I realized these guys don’t want to go back to work after lunch. But they’re going. That’s their job. If they can exhibit that level of dedication for that job I should be able to do the same. Trudge your ass in.
He’s done okay since then.
Sometimes I feel like I don’t know exactly what I want to write. Or I do, but I don’t know exactly HOW to write about it. So why bother sitting down to do it, if I’m not inspired?
I can’t control when I’m going to be inspired. All I can control is whether I’m ready when it comes, and if I’ve decided to watch TV for a while, or doomscroll on Twitter, or bake marzipan bites for later, or check my email, I’m actively pushing it away. I’m not saying I’m good about this, but I do TRY to put myself in position to be ready when it comes.
First thing I learned in tennis… class? workshop? symposium?… was “grab the racket like you’re shaking hands with it, bend your knees, then with your other hand grab it by the neck. There. That’s the ready position. Now if somebody serves, you’re ready to hit it back.” So whatever that is for writing, I try to do that every day. I don’t. But I try.
Grab the computer by the neck like you’re shaking hands. Wait for the serve. Hit it back.
Don’t loaf and invite inspiration; light out after it with a club, and if you don’t get it you will nonetheless get something that looks remarkably like it.
That one was Jack London. Also did well.
So:
1) Understand it’s difficult, and not only for you, so it’s okay.
2) Do it anyway.
3) Don’t wait to be inspired.
And finally, consistency. I’ve recently started following a guy named Scott Myers on Twitter. He’s a screenwriter who blogs extensively about writing, and I enjoy reading his stuff, both because he has some good insights and because it helps me avoid actually writing (addicted!).
Here’s something he wrote that I’ve been thinking about a lot.
I like all of it, but the number that stands out to me is 1. Had I been writing one page a day just since I moved to Hollywood, I would have close to 6000 pages by now! How many pilots? (200) How many screenplays? (66.6 repeating) And obviously it's more complicated than that, because I've been working a lot of that time... but not all of it, by any means, so still, a lot of wasted time. That one page a day adds up, and I have let lots of time go by.
It's definitely a struggle. Commit to the struggle.
I got another email, just the other day, this one from a friend who writes wonderful stories about his childhood in the 50’s in the deeply rural west of Ireland (he left there as a young man and moved to London for a while, and then he and I arrived in America the same week, as it turns out). His wife of many, many years died last year, and it hit him pretty hard. And that sadness clearly hasn’t left him. His grief is not gone. But, he told me, the writing helps:
My escape is the stories. While I’m writing, I’m there at a time when I could do anything.
The act looms so large in prospect, is so easy to avoid, but often when I sit down to do it (though not always by any means), I look up and it’s four hours later and I haven’t had a care in the world except the page in front of me, and I know a little more.
I’m contradicting myself. It seems I’m saying the writing itself isn’t hard, it’s the sitting down. And sitting down is easy.
So maybe ultimately the best answer is just let gravity work? Wow. Writing is suddenly so easy.
See? Now I know a little more.
Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.
That one was Louis L’Amour, and I like that one enough that years ago I scribbled it won on a scrap of paper and stuck it on a bulletin board in my office in New York, and I still have it. Somewhere. I can’t find it right now. That New York office was great. I gotta try to recreate that out here. Maybe I can do that instead of write...
By the way, I get the sense that nobody ever told L’Amour it was okay to turn the faucet off once in a while. I mean, geez Louise, Louis, not every thought needs to be a novel.
I kid because I am jealous, and he is dead.
