5 Harsh Truths About Writing After 10 Years Of Doing It
Most of the time is the most difficult job in the world. And the best job in the world at the same time.
Imagine spending your day in front of a laptop putting words on a white screen that strangers, family, and friends will read. Imagine spending your day finding the right words to entertain, inform, or inspire people from all over the world. It’s a super-power. And it’s a curse that few people manage to carry.
Why do we write?
And what it means to be a writer? For the outside world, writing is romantic, passionate, intense, excitable, and any other words that somebody uses when they don’t know what to say when you tell’em ‘I’m a writer’.
And what about the hidden working that nobody is seeing, but the writer who spends hours locked in the house, at a laptop screen that eventually and slowly affects your eyesight.
I’ve always assumed that writing is what I have to do in life even if sometimes is the hardest job in the world. After about 10 years of writing all sorts of articles (from journalism to content creation), and four book and multiple screenplays — that are hidden in my laptop because why not — I compile 5 harsh truths about writing.
Those are the reasons why we love and hate writing. And you need to understand them before you dive into it.
1. It’s not easy
As I’ve said: is the hardest job in the world. Don’t get me wrong, I love writing, but sometimes I feel like I would throw it away and get over with my life. It’s hard because you need to be in the flow every single day of your life. You can’t have a bad day.
“Today I’m giving only 90%”. No, you’re not. You can’t and you wouldn’t.
Giving just 90% today means you lost 10% and before you know it, it will come hunting you in the future. That 10% is enough to not let you sleep at night. And it will hurt your writing. Because, believe me, if something can make your writing life miserable, it will do it.
Writing is about bringing your A-game every single day of your life even if you don’t want to.
We all have bad days or weeks. Some of us even have bad months. (And now I hear the opening of Friends in my head). But if you will not take your writing seriously nobody will ever do.
I lost 6 months before I decided to start writing again. I let the fear and anxiety run over me and I started to say ‘I’ll do it tomorrow”.
You will not do it tomorrow.
I have a few months when I foul myself that not writing is a good idea because ‘I let my ideas grow in the back of my mind’. Wrong. It was a bad idea that grows in my head and forces me to not write a single word. It was a bad idea that flooded my mind with doubt and stress. Because your mind is like a muscle, if you don’t do it regularly it will be much harder in the future to reignite the creativity.
So you need to write constantly, even a few words or paragraphs a day no matter what.
2. You will invest time. A lot of it
People think that writing means sitting in a comfy chair, with a cup of coffee for 2 or 3 hours a day and call it a writing career. But in the beginning is not about the coffee. Hell, even in the middle is not about coffee. Is about the time you invest to arrive at the point where you sit for 2 hours with your coffee and write a bunch of articles.
In the beginning, you need to put effort and - most importantly - time into your writing. You need to work not 8 hours a day, but every single moment of your day.
That implies:
- reading,
- writing,
- searching for the next subject,
- editing,
- finding the perfect photo
It means to read every writer that comes into your eyesight. You need to search in modern literature and traditional literature. You must read The Brothers Karamazov and articles with 1 minute reading time. And after you did all of that reading… you read more.
“If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.” ― Stephen King
And you never stop.
Your entire life will have two constants: reading and writing.
And don’t get me started with writing when English is not your native language.
3. It’s not a full-time job. It’s beyond that and is not for everybody
Here comes the hard part. The part that I shatter somebody’s dreams and hopes. But writing, contrary to what you read or hear, is not for everybody.
I’m sorry but it’s the hard truth.
You need to feel the words. To breathe the words.
To spend most of your life in front of a laptop at 2 in the morning having a mental break because you can’t find the right word to illustrate what your wonderful brain is telling you.
Then you need to search for the perfect title. Which, of course, you will find only after you publish the article.
I began to write online after I was tired to do my other job. Journalism. Meaning I was tired of writing so I pursued my passion on… writing in English, which is not my native language. That makes sense.
So writing was a good idea, right? Wrong. Writing means you can’t be tired and you need to be a writer 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Admittedly, you’ll not write non-stop, but your brain will not have a break.
Everything you read becomes a potential next article. You’ll never enjoy a movie ever again because you’ll be looking (even unconsciously) for ideas. And you’ll enable the English subtitles to look for another word that will be perfect in your next article. Even a chat with a friend will have your brain spinning from all the ideas going through it.
You get tired eventually but that’s your life now. You think, eat, sleep, eat searching for your next subject.
4. Failure is above you every second
Writing is the most exotic work in the world. I’ve said it and nobody can say shit about it. Writing is not an ordinary career and even if somebody is teaching you how to write, you can’t learn how to feel the writing.
As cheesy as it may sound, writing comes within, and no school, diploma, program, or online course could make you a writer. You need to feel it, live with it, eat with it, and breathe it.
I mean, yeah, you can learn how to write, or how to construct a book, but you can’t be explained how to put your soul into it.
You squeeze your soul on paper until nothing is left. You are vulnerable, you put your whole life and feelings on that paper. If you’re good enough you even cry a little while you write.
And then … nothing. Maybe a few people will read your book or article. If you're lucky they will tell you the writing is trash and don’t write ever again.
Or if you’re really lucky they will love it. But then you’ll need to write another article that's new, but just like the first one, but not like that. I don’t like it that way. Just make it like how I imagine it. You need to have some imagination man, what the hell.
5. You will be feeling incomplete
Do you know why every writer that has ever been was writing book after book, or article after article? They will tell it is because they have something to say, or because of the money or some BS about fulfilling their life.
The truth is deep down, every writer knows they do this because they feel incomplete. They woke up every single day with the feeling of not achieve anything and try to put a few words on a paper to have the illusion of making something out of nothing.
So you try every day to fill that hole in your soul by:
- searching for the right word,
- finding the best example,
- putting together an article that (you think) has meaning for the reader
- start to bleed all over your article, opening up old scars
Then comes something that you, as a writer, have more than you need. You start to imagine.
You imagine how everybody will notice your writing, embrace it and praise your intelligence, knowledge, and intellect. How life-changing that 1000-ish word article about nothing will be for a stranger from another country that never heard of you.
But then nothing happens.
Or worse.
All of the above happens but you feel the same as the day before publishing it. With all the buzz around your work, you remain the same insecure person, agonizing about a small mistake on the text that nobody will ever see because you want perfection. You seek perfection because that’s what you think is all about and somehow that perfection will make you a better person. But it doesn’t.
You remain the same person who asks for validation from strangers that’s unable to find peace even when that validation comes to you.
So romantic, passionate, intense, excitable? Not at all.
Is nerve-wracking, annoying, lonely, time-consuming, and incomprehensible.
In my country, we have a saying: ‘ I don’t want that even for my enemies’. And that’s what writing is for somebody who has done it for years. You feel stuck on it, you ask yourself every day if you’re not making a mistake. You feel insecure about it and for that, you can’t sleep at night.
“A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.” ― Thomas Mann, Essays of Three Decades
But you love it and can’t stand without it. You spend every second thinking about it for stranger's appreciation, because you think that’s what will fill the void in yourself. Is not, so you keep writing because you can’t live without it.
Your love-hate relationship with writing is driving you crazy every single day, but you can’t do it without it. You know that you’ll feel more incomplete and miserable if you don’t write. And on the good days, it will be the most amazing experience ever known to a human being. It will be something that even you, a writer, can’t find the words to describe it.