When Writing Becomes Work
Or… When You Lose The Passion For Writing
I love to write.
If you put me in front of a keyboard and set me free, I will weave and create for hours, getting so completely lost in the process that I can lose track of the day before I know it.
There is something so enjoyable for me in putting words to the screen (once upon a time we said, “putting pen to paper”) that it is like I have entered another world, one that is, of course, of my own making.
However, I occasionally hit an impasse. And I am sure I am not the only one who does this, but it usually happens when, for some reason or another, the writing process shifts from “I want to do this!” to “I have to get this done.”
In other words, when the writing becomes a task or work that needs to be done.
Now, if you are writing for creative reasons, that should never happen. Once you feel like you need to push yourself to write, to complete that next paragraph or page, stop and move on to something else.
Once you hit that wall, your writing will be forced, pushed out of you, and your reader will probably feel that too when they are reading your work.
Think of it this way. How often have you listened to a person who was genuinely passionate and motivated about what they were talking about, and felt their energy? You get into it, right? You sort of get carried away by the emotion that they are putting into it.
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I like to use the example of Andy Weir’s “The Martian”. When I read that, I pick up on a person who really enjoyed writing that book, and I get carried away. I felt the same when I read another book by him called, “Hail Mary”, it too was a book I could not put down.
Now read, “Of a Fire On the Moon”, by Norman Mailer. I had to read that in College, and I picked that one because it was on a topic I loved. This felt like it was written by someone who was completely uninterested in what they were writing. Like someone who was showing up for Participation Credit.
To his credit, I am told that Mailer is a great writer, but I will have to take the people who tell me this on their word, because the two books I read by him were a struggle to get through. Neither inspired any excitement in me for the topic he was writing about, and both took me an inordinate amount of time to finish.
To be fair, these are simply my opinions on Mailer. I encourage you to read him and make your own determination.
For me, when I write my fictive works, there is, most of the time, an energy that pushes me, and I get lost in it. But every now and again, I hit the wall.
If you are a writer, you know exactly what I'm talking about. It’s not that you ran out of ideas; it’s that you can no longer put them into words without some force. Like you were jogging down a path, and suddenly it ends with no discernible way to keep going without some effort and maybe a few injuries.
That is the point at which you stop and find something else to do. Like work out, read, watch some mindless TV (spoiler… Most TV is mindless. Just spend an hour watching “The Rookie” with my wife!), or anything else that is not writing.
The point is, let your mind rest and catch up with you. It might take a couple of hours, a couple of days, or even a couple of weeks, but you will feel it happen. There is a little bell in your head that will go off.
“Ding”
The microwave is done; your story is ready to continue.
Happy Writing.
