The Contrary Writer

I always thought that an artist’s was the hardest life of all. Its rigor—not always apparent to an outside observer—is that an artist has to navigate forward into the unknown guided only by an internal sense of direction, keep up a set of standards which are imposed entirely from within, meanwhile maintaining faith that the task he has set himself to is worth struggling constantly to achieve. This is all contrary to the notion of bohemian disorder.”

Lucian Freud (via Austin Kleon)

If you’ve been wondering why it’s hard to write: it’s because it’s hard!

Creative Contradictions

Creative people don’t like to be told what to do…so we opt for a lifestyle where we have to be self-motivated—on good days and bad—or nothing gets done only to long for someone to tell us exactly what to do, some days.

We love novelty and discovery…so we end up living lives that require us to work really hard to figure everything out ourselves. (There’s no template for a best-selling story and if there was, we wouldn’t use it, because that would feel like factory work!)

We prize our vivid imaginations…and curse them when they block us from writing the majestic, soaring words we long to our onto the page.

Making it Harder...And Easier

Recently, writer and literary agent, Kate McKean turned back to her work-in-progress, after letting it sit dormant for a few months. Here’s a list of things that ran through her head as she sat down to work:

What the hell am I writing about?
I have to read this whole thing through before I start again.
I have to read my whole outline through before I start again.
Maybe I can write a newsletter about this experience.
This is why I say touch your manuscript most days because if I’d taken my own advice I wouldn’t be in this mess and I could have been writing for the last hour instead of dragging my feet.
I am anxious and this sucks.
I can’t believe I only have 6000 words. I would have 30k by now if I had stuck to my plan from January.
What if I have to rewrite the whole thing already?
What if I just rewrite the whole thing right now? Start over so I won’t have to go back and reread these 6000 words?
Great, now I only have half an hour to write.
Oh hey let me go see what’s going on in the group chat.
Great, now I only have 20 minutes to write.

(Kate McKean, Agents + Books )

Sound familiar?

(McKean has vowed to take her own advice and ‘touch my manuscript every day’, to keep it more ‘alive’ in her mind, going forward, a piece of advice I’m happy to pass on to you here.)

3 Thoughts For The Week Ahead

Keep going

You need to write.
There will come a day when you REALLY need to write.
Keep your muscles flexed and your belief high.

Writing is hard

And that’s OK.

We chose the path less traveled by

Though we may slip on the occasional leaf and trip over the odd hummock of grass, it will, I think, make all the difference.

Keep writing,

Julie

P. S. I am lining up writing prompts from some amazing writers for this year’s StoryADay May. I am so excited to share their names and their prompts with you (soon, my precious!). But for now, make sure you’re signed up to get all the prompts this year, but entering your email address here (yes, even if you’re on this list. I don’t spam everyone with the prompts. Only people who sign up for each year’s challenge)

Julie Duffy