Today, I’m answering the only question that I have been asked by almost every writing student I’ve had: Is it normal to hate everything I write?
Oh, sweet summer child. Sit down a minute.
I’m drafting this summer alongside the rest of the writers in this year’s cohort in the Year of Writing Magically workshop, and it has been great.
It has also been awful.
Drafting is always a mix for me. I start out working on the novel, feeling great, thinking I’m a genius, my work is so good and then…
… well, then, I hit a point in the book where I deflate like a balloon with a slow leak and realize I’m not as good at this as I think I am. Everything’s a mess, my protagonist is passive even though I know better, I can’t get the stupid romantic conflict to work, and nothing I’ve written is as good as it was in my head before I wrote it.
I suck.
Your taste is going to outpace your skill
If you haven’t already heard of Ira Glass and “The Gap” then please take this moment to watch this very short video, and you can t
hank me in the comments.
What Glass is saying, for those of you who
just Don’t Have The Fucking Time (I get it), is that as you grow as an artist, you will always be leaning in the direction of your taste (your ability to discern what is quality work and what is not) but your skill will always be a few steps behind.
Always.
The good news here is that you think you suck, but you don’t. You’re just on a path. Are you as good as the artists you most admire? Probably not.
But… they’re not as good as the artists they most admire, either.
But we’re all on the same path.
Imagine Sisyphus satisfied
Writing is a Sisyphusian task, and it has a kind of Sisyphusian satisfaction to it. In this metaphor, you aren’t pushing a boulder up the same hill every time. It’s more like a never ending-series of hills, and on each one, you get better at pushing the boulder. The boulder goes up the hill, and then it rolls forward, not back. Yes, then there’s another fucking hill ahead, and staring at the effort ahead of you can be daunting and discouraging.
But on every trip, you will get better at rolling it. It’s just that your focus is going to be mostly at the spot at the top of the hill, which means you’re going to feel a lot of the time like there’s just no progress.
So every now and again, just stop. Notice the boulder, how much smoother it’s getting under your hands. This thing you’ve been doing has become so second-nature, you didn’t even notice. The endless fucking hills may be annoying and discouraging, but the boulder itself is beautiful, and it’s getting more beautiful as you go. Sometimes, if the sun is at the right angle, you might even notice it sparkling a bit. That’s the result of the continuous effort you’ve put into what you do. You have muscles building, making the boulder maybe not feel as heavy as it once did, even though pushing it up that hill will always be a challenge.
But you can’t admire the boulder for long, because you must keep moving. So take a deep breath, and keep pushing, and accept that when you feel like you hate that boulder so much you want to scream, that is absolutely normal.
Registration for The Year of Writing Magically ‘27 opens on September 1!
So...you are speaking directly to me right now, Lani. I swear I kept hearing you say, "Nan" the whole time you were talking. Thanks... I needed this.