Writing Sucks
“The road to hell is painted with adverbs” - Stephen King
“It is a perpetual challenge and it is more difficult than anything else that I have ever done – so I do it. And it makes me happy when I do it well.” - Ernest Hemingway
“You can fix anything but a blank page.” - Nora Roberts
There you have it folks, even the greats know the challenges of writing and writing well. But what is it truly about writing that sucks? Well… each writer has their own strengths and weaknesses and considering this, what sucks about writing can be quite personal. But there are general issues that all writers face, world building, procrastination, finding the time to write, pacing.
I hope by sharing in this blog post what I personally find difficult about writing, that maybe I might help other writers feel less alone. So here it goes, why writing sucks…
You can’t just “see” a story - There’s a reason why I try and put an image with every short story I publish on this website. We live in a quick content-consuming society at the moment, and a short story, no matter if it is between 500-1000 words, is not a 16 second piece of content. And what is published, what is shared, is revision after revision. My short stories are usually Revision C. The novel I’m currently editing is Revision F. So there is a lot of work that is unseen. And that’s something I personally struggle with because it causes a lot of doubt. I have to remind myself that life is not a linear equation, and “effort + time” does not always equate to “observable success”.
Middle of the book - God I hate the middle of the book. If it was a movie, this is the part of the story you quickly go for a pee-break. But as a writer, I can’t just pee-break my story. It’ll be there, waiting to be written. Waiting for me to build upon characterisation, to ensure my world building is consistent, and most importantly, ensure that what I’m writing is interesting enough people don’t go for their pee-breaks and put down the book. It’s a lot of pressure, and it is something that can introduce a bit of procrastination.
Descriptive language - My first revision of a story is generally two things coming together. A character doing something and a character saying something. And then, after finally getting all this down, I need to go back and insert adverbs and adjectives. Sure, If I think of something in my first revision, I’ll include it, but that’s not usually the case. When I’m writing the first draft/revision I know what my character looks like, how they’re saying the words - because it is all in my mind. Unfortunately readers cannot read my mind. Having thesaurus.com handy helps me get through this.
Character Arcs - Why did Luke Skywalker throw down his lightsabre and deny the emperor the violence of patricide? Because Luke followed his values. It was a character choice. But if Luke was given that choice at the beginning of New Hope, he would not have made that same decision. It’s because he’s grown, he’s developed. Both his abilities and his outlook on life. This is what we call a character arc and I forget to do it a lot. Probably because I’m more of a discovery writer than a outline writer. Or maybe because I’m still learning this schtick. But it has caused me to sit down and think about how I want my characters to develop and grow through my story. And why they act, and say the things they do. Which in turn has caused a lot of rework, which brings me to my next point.
Rework - Currently the novel I’m working on is 102,000 words, but I’ve deleted and edited probably 50,000 words. So really, I’ve written 152,000 words. That 50,000 words is what I call rework and is the biggest contributor to my procrastination. Nothing is more annoying then writing a chapter, and three months later, after you’ve done some thinking, and upskilled a little bit with a writing course, to come back, delete it and try again. But then nothing is more satisfying to see your writing improve. So I suppose the suck of rework is worth it. It just realllllyyy sucks…
There are plenty of other things that suck about writing. But to avoid this blog post being a ‘Debbie Downer’ let me just quickly add - Ernest Hemingway got it right - embracing the suck, embracing the doubts and challenges…. We learn, we adapt, we get better, we become more focused. And finally when the new piece of writing is out on the paper and we read it…
Joy.
xo A.R.Willow
