As someone who’s been writer from the age of five, I can say writing is simultaneously a blessing and a curse. Sometimes you will love what you create. Other times you will completely hate it. But that’s not the only thing writers have to deal with. Here’s six daily struggles writers have to deal with:
Liking ideas we come up with.
Any creative person can agree with this. Artists, musicians, etc. all struggle to find something that they feel is just “right”. For every book that exists, there are probably three times as many that are unpublished, uncompleted, or scrapped. Writers go through several ideas, come up with different storylines, but may ultimately give it up. This is because creative people come up with a lot of ideas. Most of them don’t receive second thoughts but sometimes an idea will stick. And even when you do like an idea, you’ll second guess yourself. You may even dump the idea completely because it sounds “stupid”, “impossible”, “already done”, and etc.
It consumes you whole.
Sometimes all you can think about is ideas for your book, short story, etc. Your mind is constantly elsewhere while you struggle to maintain a daily routine. If you are out and about, chances are you’ll come up with something and have to write it down. Then you intensely start thinking about said idea and think of five more. This can lead you to ultimately forget about everything around you. Sometimes, you can be so far gone in your idea that you forget the world you live in is real. If you’re in class, you’ll probably daydream about scenes from your story. At your job you’ll come up with thirty terms you want to research for your book. Having a normal life when all you want to do is write your book can be nearly nearly impossible.
Writer’s Block.
It’s arguably the biggest issue writers will face. For those who are unfamiliar with the term, it happens when you have no idea where to go next with a story. This stage is sadly inevitable to happen to all writers. No one is safe from this. The results of writer’s block are spectrum-like. Some writers are lucky and they are unblocked in a week. Some writers sadly never get past it and ultimately give up on their idea. Sadly, curing writer’s block is different for everyone.
Finding people to read your work.
This should arguably be a no brainer. But surprisingly, it isn’t. To a lot of writers, writing is a very personal thing. In a way it’s like reading someone’s diary. Writing stories is a very personal thing and having others ask can make writers uncomfortable. When a writer is passionate about their story, they will put everything they have into completing it. They may have tried to show other people their story in the past and could have received harsh criticism. So if someone is ever like, “You wanna read my manuscript sometime?”, consider it a great honor.
You want everything to be perfect.
You know it’s impossible, everyone knows it’s impossible to have a perfect literary piece. But you will try to anyway. And it is honestly one of the most stressful things you can experience. You want your story to be perceived just as you do in your head, but you know that everyone sees everything differently. Therefore, it's not unheard of to have mental breakdowns over your stories.
Deadlines.
If you’ve ever written a paper in college, you know they are the devil. You’ll think you have plenty of time to come up with a good idea. Then you get distracted and then you realize, “Oh God, I haven’t thought of anything yet”. So you will pull something out of nowhere and try to write it, hoping that it’s good enough for your audience. If you’re sending something to be published, it just makes it more of a problem.
What are other struggles that writers face? If there’s something I didn’t cover, please send me a comment! If you think I did a good job in writing this article, please share it with your friends on social media!
