- It was fun.
- Everyone told me I was good at it.
- I wanted to live a mythical lifestyle in which I could sit at home in my pyjamas all day.
But very quickly, it became more than that; I wanted to write because I loved it. Writing became My Thing™. If I wasn't doing it, I was thinking about it--puzzling plot together in my head, and secretly scrawling details in the margins of my notes when the teacher wasn't looking. It was fun, and exciting, and some deep force inside of me was burning a passion for it in my gut. It was my safe space, my comfort zone, my everything. I fell head over heels in love with writing. And make no mistake, I still love writing.
But I don't always love writing.
I love writing in bursts and in phases, like a sparkler that burns my hand rather than an ember that'll keep me warm at night. I plow forward, inevitably lose momentum, and finally fizzle out to an abrupt halt. It's my fatal flaw. As much as I may try to find the ~perfect project~ that'll magically sustain my productivity, it just never happens.
I grew up believing that if I had a job I loved, it would never feel like work. But there’s an integral problem with pursuing a creative career: you start as a hobby, when the only motivation is fun and personal fullfillment. Once you add pressure--the pressure to succeed, the pressure to improve, the pressure to make money--it starts to lose its fun. And once you start trying to calculate project marketability, and even outright avoiding projects you deem to be unmarketable...well, there goes most of the fulfillment, too.
For a long time, I thought that the solution to my fatal flaw was to treat writing like a real job. If I gave myself deadlines, and approached my projects with discipline, maybe I'd be able to power thorugh to the other side--even if there was no paycheque waiting for me. But in doing so, I began to ignore my strongest medium for self-expression and creative freedom, instead seeing the craft exclusively as a skill set to be monetized. I started worrying that I wasn't being productive enough, or making the amount of progress I thought I should have achieved. I stopped allowing myself the chance to step back when it stopped being fun; instead, I pushed myself harder. This isn't even REAL work, I told myself. You love this, after all.
All the while, there was a tiny voice inside my head asking--if I can't even muster the motivation to do this now, when all expectations are my own and every creative decision is entirely mine, how could I possibly do this for the rest of my life? Is this what my dream job is supposed to look like?
Suddenly, writing was the scariest and hardest thing to do. I've wanted to be a writer since I was nine. For the majority of my life, I've had one goal: to get published. It's been my motivation, my driving force, the focus of every tattered journal and every daydream for over half of my life. I've dedicated my life to building these skills from the ground up. So when that driving force is questioned, when I start to wonder if this is really for me or really what I want to do--it's scary as hell.
So I stopped. I avoided it. It was easier to hide than to face the reality that I might not be the writer I thought I was. But y'know what?
I came back. I may have taken a little longer, maybe eased back in a little hesitantly. But I always come back. I can never stay away for very long.
The idea that you'll "never work a day in your life" is bullshit. Writing is work. Creativity is work. At the end of the day, it's still a job, and like any job, there will be as many good days as there are bad days. (If you're lucky, you'll get more of the good ones.) It’s the good days that remind me why I want to do this, why I keep showing up. It’s the satisfaction of stringing together that perfect sentence, the thrill of expressing my thoughts in ~JUST~ the right way. Just because I get tired, fed up, frustrated by the anarchic writing process, doesn’t mean I'm any less of a writer. Waking up and deciding that I’m not in the mood to write doesn’t make me any less of a writer. The bad days aren’t going to make me stop showing up.
I grew up believing that if I had a job I loved, it would never feel like work. But there’s an integral problem with pursuing a creative career: you start as a hobby, when the only motivation is fun and personal fullfillment. Once you add pressure--the pressure to succeed, the pressure to improve, the pressure to make money--it starts to lose its fun. And once you start trying to calculate project marketability, and even outright avoiding projects you deem to be unmarketable...well, there goes most of the fulfillment, too.
For a long time, I thought that the solution to my fatal flaw was to treat writing like a real job. If I gave myself deadlines, and approached my projects with discipline, maybe I'd be able to power thorugh to the other side--even if there was no paycheque waiting for me. But in doing so, I began to ignore my strongest medium for self-expression and creative freedom, instead seeing the craft exclusively as a skill set to be monetized. I started worrying that I wasn't being productive enough, or making the amount of progress I thought I should have achieved. I stopped allowing myself the chance to step back when it stopped being fun; instead, I pushed myself harder. This isn't even REAL work, I told myself. You love this, after all.
All the while, there was a tiny voice inside my head asking--if I can't even muster the motivation to do this now, when all expectations are my own and every creative decision is entirely mine, how could I possibly do this for the rest of my life? Is this what my dream job is supposed to look like?
Suddenly, writing was the scariest and hardest thing to do. I've wanted to be a writer since I was nine. For the majority of my life, I've had one goal: to get published. It's been my motivation, my driving force, the focus of every tattered journal and every daydream for over half of my life. I've dedicated my life to building these skills from the ground up. So when that driving force is questioned, when I start to wonder if this is really for me or really what I want to do--it's scary as hell.
So I stopped. I avoided it. It was easier to hide than to face the reality that I might not be the writer I thought I was. But y'know what?
I came back. I may have taken a little longer, maybe eased back in a little hesitantly. But I always come back. I can never stay away for very long.
The idea that you'll "never work a day in your life" is bullshit. Writing is work. Creativity is work. At the end of the day, it's still a job, and like any job, there will be as many good days as there are bad days. (If you're lucky, you'll get more of the good ones.) It’s the good days that remind me why I want to do this, why I keep showing up. It’s the satisfaction of stringing together that perfect sentence, the thrill of expressing my thoughts in ~JUST~ the right way. Just because I get tired, fed up, frustrated by the anarchic writing process, doesn’t mean I'm any less of a writer. Waking up and deciding that I’m not in the mood to write doesn’t make me any less of a writer. The bad days aren’t going to make me stop showing up.
I still want to be an author. I want to be an author because I believe in the power of stories and shared experiences; because I express myself better through words on paper than I ever could out loud; because I love the chaotic calm that comes with working alone in a coffee shop, surrounded by strangers doing their own things. I want to be an author because, for me, the good days are well worth all of the bad ones.
Some people like to say that “true” artists are entirely dedicated, perhaps borderline obsessed with their craft. Some people say that "true" writers wake up thinking about writing. Sometimes I fall into that category—sometimes. When the planets align during a full harvest moon on the equinox, yes, I wake up thinking about writing. But sometimes, I don't even think about being a writer. I wake up wishing that I didn’t have to get out of bed. I wake up eager to play Sims from sunup to sundown, or eager to watch whatever TV episode has dropped overnight. I wake up thinking about everything BUT writing, because starting a writing session is one of the hardest things in the world.
But still, I wake up knowing that I am a writer, regardless of how often I get to do it or how often I even want to do it. I wake up knowing that once I get started, more often than not, it'll get easier. I know I'm the same writer if I write one word or one thousand words or no words at all.
And more importantly, I wake up knowing that writing is not my defining characteristic--it's just one tiny piece of the whole.
Until later,
- Justyne
But still, I wake up knowing that I am a writer, regardless of how often I get to do it or how often I even want to do it. I wake up knowing that once I get started, more often than not, it'll get easier. I know I'm the same writer if I write one word or one thousand words or no words at all.
And more importantly, I wake up knowing that writing is not my defining characteristic--it's just one tiny piece of the whole.
Until later,
- Justyne
