Writing is a strange career. It’s at once a creative endeavor and a masochistic effort. We stare at a blank page and do our best to spill out our ideas, emotions and past on the page. It’s a personal and vulnerable act that opens us up to criticism and judgement. To rejection. It allows us to explore expression and creation, which is both exhilarating and terrifying, depending on how the words are flowing and the day.
Writing is not like other jobs. It’s not something you do from nine to five and leave behind you. You carry it with you always. In the car, the shower, and as you fall asleep at night. It’s not something that ever feels complete or finished.
It’s a journey of emotional hills and valleys. Some days you feel on top of the world and others you feel like you should break your pencil and start digging ditches for a living.
This is normal. Unfortunately.
I think it is impossible to spend a life writing without feeling like a tennis shoe being tumbled in a washing machine, knocking against the sides at it purges the dirt from its surface. Sure, the shoe gets clean in the end, but it’s not an easy ride.
The trick to being a successful writer is to keep writing no matter how hard the knocks, and there will be knocks. Rejection is part of this journey. So are edits and critiques and requests for changes. There’s no such thing as a finished product, only a published one that mocks us with the tiny errors we missed and now exist in public for all to see.
But it’s those days when the words flow and characters do what we want that makes the world seems perfect and amazing. It’s those days filled with ideas and beautiful sentences that keep us going. It’s the rush of capturing what’s in our heads and slamming it on the page that keep our pens moving. There’s nothing like a good day of writing. It re-energizes and makes everything else fall away.
No matter how you feel in the moment, keep writing. Keep searching for those elusive, amazing days of pure creation without angst and worry showing their nasty selves. Those days do exist and are worth pursuing, even through the slog of bad ones.
When the bad days happen (and they will), keep writing anyway. Words on the page are better than a blank one. The best writing happens during rewriting and it’s impossible to reach that stage if there’s nothing on the page to rewrite. So keep flinging words. Some will stick and you can get rid of the others.
Embrace the ride, no matter how rough, no matter how many twists and turns. Writing is a roller coaster that pays off in the end, but only if you stay on the ride.