Have You Ever Started To Truly, Deeply Hate Your Writing?

If Yes, This Story May Help

Have you ever opened your laptop and gone, “Well, fuck me sideways. I do NOT want to be here”?

You do not want your fingers to be tap-tap-tapping the keyboard.

You do not want to pull up Word, or Google Docs, or Medium, or (god help us) Asana and make pixels do words.

You hit the moment when you hate the entire thing and you slam the laptop shut and go, “you know what? I’m done.”

If yes, you are not alone. I know that feel. Know it intimately.

Because that was me, two months ago.

In Which Writing Sucks and I Hate It In The Face

Two (three? idk) months ago, I momentarily contemplated picking up another book on freelancing. Or opening up Medium. Or figuring out some new way to do client development. And I felt intense, intense hatred for the very thought of writing. For the entire concept.

In that moment, I had a realization.

I did not want to be a writer.

Nope! Nay, nada, nein, fraulein. I did not want this nonsense.

I did not want the stress, and the uncertainty, and the no guaranteed paychecks ever.

I’m an adult. Shit costs money. I’m literally choosing to be stressed out of my mind about my finances all the damn time by trying to be a writer.

That’s kinda dumb, I thought. I can do something about that, I considered. I could, in fact, just not be a writer, I concluded.

*SKREEEEEEEECRASHBOOM MIND EXPLODES*

It was a magnificent moment. The second when I let myself just fricking breathe and say, “You know what? Not for me.”

So! I la-de-dah’d through the next couple of months, deciding to go for a full-time position as a technical writer (it’s different it doesn’t count) with Official Science People (astrophysicists everywhere, omg), and relaxing into the joy of not being a fucking writer.

It was glorious.

Howevah.

In Which I Reluctantly Conclude That Words Are Not My Enemy

Time and space have this nifty habit of granting insight. And with the space of a couple of months I gave myself, I realized something.

(Pay attention, this is the important part. If you nodded at all during the intro, this is the big lesson.)

It’s not that I Don’t Want To Write Ever Again, Gawd.

It’s that I do. not. want. to spend my life trying (and, thus far, failing) to make it my living.

It’s that trying to make a job out of it, trying to wring money out of it, a) kills the joy, b) feels like getting blood from a stone, and c) makes me objectively want to throw up my small intestine (which would be problems, that sucker is like 30 feet long).

But you know when you do something you love for a living and end up HATING it?

That’s where I was. And if you take a sec to examine things, you may realize that’s where you are too.

Because for me, at least, it wasn’t the words. Words themselves aren’t my enemy. I’m not about to go scorched-earth on the alphabet.

It was demanding that the words bring in income in lieu of a full-time job. It was the pressure, the three different full-time jobs wearing one hat that writing on your own entails. It was entrepreneurship itself.

It wasn’t the writing that I hated. It was the business.

In Which Writing Isn’t The Problem. Uncertainty and Pressure Are.

My loves, I have been enamored of entrepreneurship since before I could spell the word. I have spent legit a decade trying to figure out how to make it work for me (give or take three years of serious illness). And I just couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t make myself do the things I knew I should do.

The marketing. The systems. The client development. The whole thing.

And it took tossing the entire concept of writing into the bin to make me realize why: it’s because I didn’t wanna effing do it.

Being an entrepreneur or a small business owner or a freelancer when you don’t enjoy it that aspect of it suuuuucks. But I was so convinced that I should enjoy it, that it was the right thing, that I ignored my own (pretty obvious) signals flashing “You Don’t Like This, Sillypants. Stop Doing It.”

Because the thing is, I do enjoy the work of writing. Fixing people’s bios and applications and emails gives me a lot of personal satisfaction. Swearing onto the page in Medium is enjoyable. Making pens plot the imminent destruction of humanity for a friend gives me the giggles (working on it, Liberty Forrest, Author!).

But I’m done making it my job. My writing does not have to feed my cats. That’s why my upcoming 9–5 is for, and I’m pretty fricking excited about it.

So before you toss your laptop, homicidal writing implements, and writing as a whole into the bin, take a moment. Ask yourself what pressures you’re putting on your writing. Figure out what it is you’re requiring your writing to do. Because the problem may not be the writing at all. It may be the weight of expectations crushing out all the word-y joy.

Farewell, Entrepreneurial Carrie. You had a good run, but I don’t enjoy you and you made me hate writing for a second there. So you can stuff your small intestine back into your abdominal cavity now. We won’t make you throw it up anymore.

*gingerly picks up her laptop from where it’s been covered in intestinal fluids* But do me a solid, first. Clean up the mess.