I wrote my first short story when I was seven years old. It was about a man named Jack who’d embarked on a life-changing quest to rescue his girlfriend from a nasty giant. It was only a few paragraphs long, and now sits unfinished in a box in some attic or storage garage somewhere. I was proud of it nonetheless. As a child, it all came to me so easily - the words, the characters, the seemingly endless stretch of imagination. I thought it would be this way forever. But over the years, I’ve realized the life of a writer can be a pounding headache. I absolutely love writing, don’t get me wrong, but there are five aspects about it that’ll drive anyone up the wall.
1. There's no right answer.
Everyone has a voice, and each voice is different. Some are poetic and extravagant. Others have a minimalistic approach and get straight to the point. Both styles have been met with praise and criticism. What’s frustrating is thinking that in order to be successful, a writer has to conform to one or the other. Fiction writing doesn’t have a rule book. Sure, there are hundreds of guides out there that help you figure out sentence structure, word-use and plotting, but there isn’t one single formula that writers are expected to follow.
2. Self-doubt comes naturally.
Imagine getting a good song stuck in your head. At first, you don’t mind it. The song has a nice beat and catchy lyrics. But then you can’t shake it off, and the tune becomes so familiar that you can’t stand to hear another second of it. Writing a story can be the same way. You have an idea for a story, but once you put it on paper, you realize it doesn’t sound as good as it did in your head. You scribble down a few words, they don’t sound quite right, you start over and repeat. Writers who are insecure about their work can convince themselves that they’re not good enough, that they shouldn’t have pursed it in the first place.
3. We idolize.
Most writers in training think they have to get it right the first time. We think that some the greatest American novels - F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” or Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man” - were written in one go. Not only are we determined to get our voices and ideas out there, but we have a desire to be at the high level of Hemingway or Fitzgerald. We become so concerned with comparing, contrasting and emulating a similar success that we lose sight of what we hope to achieve.
4. Writer's block.
This is awful. It’s every writer’s worst nightmare, to stare at a blank page or computer screen and try to fish out an idea but come up cold. What most people don’t understand is that the block isn’t something that comes and goes within a few hours. It can last for days, weeks, months even. Personally, I experienced a two-year period where I couldn’t come up with a single story, no matter how hard I tried. The best remedy for such mental constipation would be to read a good book, listen to music, watch a movie, or whatever it takes to get the creative juices flowing.
