Hey everyone! I am back again for another stand alone post during this interlude before my next series. Today’s topic is completely an opinion piece. If you don’t have any need for this topic or you are only here for straight advice about writing then this post is probably not for you. I don’t want this post to be seen as a complaining post but it is written as an opinion on some hard things about writing so take that as you will. So, without further ado….
The Hardest Part About Being A Writer
There are some very hard things about being a writer. Some of those things are easy to understand even for those who are not writers, and some are things that are hard to understand unless you are a writer. I haven’t broken my list down into the hardest things vs the easier things but I have broken it down into things that are easy for all people to know are hard about writing and things that are hard only for writers. Again, this is my opinion through speaking with writers and non-writers in my daily life and if you disagree with any of these statements that is fine. It’s my opinion and you are free to have your own. You are also free to send me an email or a message with your own opinion on this post as long as it is nice, polite, and a statement of contrary opinion rather than a message meant to start an argument.
One of the first things that is difficult about writing is editing. Don’t get me wrong there are those writers who really don’t mind editing. But in general, most writers find editing to be one of the hardest parts of writing. Part of this I think is due to the fact that you are changing something that you put a lot of effort into creating. The other part, in my opinion, is because you are rehashing a story that you already told. No one enjoys retelling the same story over and over again. It gets tedious after a while.
While editing is difficult for most writers it’s not hard for those who are not writers themselves to know that writing is hard. If you are a non-writer and you have ever edited a paper for school or had a friend who writes fiction (either professionally or for fun) then you will know the joy and pain that is editing. So, although editing is a hard things for writers it is not simply a writerly problem.
The second thing that I think is hard for writers is all the tedious worldbuilding, character building, and customizing it takes out of writing time to build a real believe storyline. Again, there are some writers who deeply enjoy those aspects. I absolutely love world building and I’ve built worlds for fun that I have never even used in a story because a map and culture popped into my head and I enjoyed making the map and writing everything down about them I could think of like an ethnologist who discovered an heretofore undiscovered country. But character building, plotting, and anything else that goes into creating a complex world with a decent storyline are not my strong suits and I often feel they are a waste of time.
Logically as a writer I know that putting in all that effort to make a world is not really a waste of my time. It helps every writer keep their characters, their worlds, and their timelines consistent and eventually leave to a better written and more well thought out novel. However, the time it takes putting effort into those areas of writing often can feel like a waste of time when one is so excited by the actual process of writing. Anyone who is not a writer can understand the tediousness of activities that feel like they take away from your ‘better’ activities.
So, to sum up the last two sections. Two of the hardest things for writers is anything that really takes them away from writing the story that they want to write even if, in the end, it does help their writing become better just like world building, character building, and editing do.
One of the last things I think is hard for writers is something I think is difficult for non-writers to grasp. This concept is what I like to call the constant creative. I’m sure there is some more technical term or a better way of referring to this that some writer out there has coined but I choose to call it the constant creative. The constant creative comes in many different forms for many different people. I personally think its this constant creative that makes writers seem a bit crazy to anyone who is not a writer.
To attempt to explain the constant creative in a simple way I can only say that the constant creative is that constant warping of life around you or interpretation of everything all the time to create some sort of constant ongoing development of new stories or story elements. For example, in the movie The Man Who Invented Christmas, Charles Dickens, the main character, is constantly seeing his characters following him everywhere. When first writing the story, he is excited that they are appearing in his everyday life and coming alive to him. And yet, as the story continues, and he begins to lose the thread of the story his characters constantly following him around has made him seem a bit crazy to those around him. But his characters point out things to him about the everyday places he goes and helps him to incorporate those simple things into his book. In the movie, Charles Dickens constant creative manifests itself as the characters physically following him to his everyday tasks.
I’ve met several writers who their constant creative also overlaps with their everyday life. One friend of mine is a fan of gardening and sometimes while gardening to her constant creative leaks in and she sees mini battle fields in her recently raked and seeded dirt. Her constant creative leaks into her everyday life in a visual way where settings sometimes appear in front of her in the weirdest of situations and she feels the need to write down the setting and any possible plot points she feels go along with the random setting.
While some writers have real life visual manifestations of their constant creative there are others who’s leaks out in more mental manifestations. This kind of constant creative, from what I understand, is just as likely as the visual kind. My constant creative manifests in this way. It’s often hard to explain but I have found one way to describe it. Imagine you close your eyes and when you open them you are sitting in a fantasy style inn at one of the round tables in the far corner, farthest from the door where only the light of torches can reach you. You can never leave this table.
In my minds eye, this is where I sit. I’m always sitting there. And yet, there is a part of me that can also see all of the world around me. I know that this inn that I am located in is at the center of a universe of connected imaginary worlds and those worlds are always being created and moved around. Hence why I feel like there are more worlds in my mind then there are stories. But adventurers with stories come from all over the universe of my imagination to tell me their stories and when they arrive at my tiny Inn, I can picture their world and they tell me their story and I write it down. If I’m busy doing something else, they sit at my table and have a drink or eat a meal while they wait for me to have time for them to continue telling me their story.
Everyone has a constant creative as a writer but it is different for every writer and it is usually hard to writers to explain to other how they work or what they look like.
Those three things are the three hardest things about being a writer. I hope that this post was fun to read and helped to understand writing a little bit more. If you have any questions or thoughts about anything mentioned in this post feel free to send me a personal message. Don’t forget to like, subscribe, share, become a page member, or follow me on social media. And don’t forget….
Get Up, Get Writing, and Get Published. See you next week!
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