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World: The UK’s European elections 2019 (Don’t blame me, I voted Green…)
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I’m Playing: World of Warcraft (life is cyclical etc etc), Elder Scrolls Online: Elsweyr (cats are people too, you know), Mario Kart 8 (Crash Team Racing hype!)
I’m sorry! I’m a day late on writing this one, and I’m also writing it a little late into said day. But I have an excuse – well, not an excuse, but a fact which might make this dreadful sin more forgivable. I’ve been writing! Not like, as in, writing blog posts or journal entries (obviously), but actual, fictional writing. Well, sort of. I’m not drafting the novel which will be my immediate breakout success and catapult me to an awards dinner with Stephen King. For now, I’m writing short stories and flash fiction. I am drinking from the water cooler at r/WritingPrompts. It tastes oddly metallic.
Writing is a muscle which needs to be stretched. Write every day, if you can, or so the writers tell me. And I’ve been hearing that advice since I graduated from university with my Creative Writing degree, and every time I’ve heard it I’ve sat and frowned a bit and done the mental equivalent of pulling my fingers backwards in punishment, or twisting my ears until they really hurt. I’ve been beating myself up! Because I grew up telling myself that my only talent was writing, and I’d given up the moment I realised that achieving my dreams wouldn’t be possible on base talent alone. I’d have to work for it! How unsightly! I’d just done three years of writing to deadlines and adjusting based on critical feedback. The world wanted me to do more of that?
Yes, Kristian. That’s how writing works.
So basing your self-worth around your only talent in the world isn’t something to be recommended, it turns out. This is because when you inevitably lose faith in your ability to do the one thing you’ve convinced yourself you can do, you no longer have value. Oops! And it doesn’t matter that you’ve graduated with upper second class honours, which is frankly fantastic. It doesn’t matter because the version of yourself which can sit at that awards dinner with Stephen King and all the rest is the version that got a First, made the Dean’s List, had already got a publishing deal lined up and had also cured cancer along the way, probably. And if I’m not that version of myself by the time I’ve graduated, when am I ever going to be?
Good lord. What a mess.
I linked to an article in an earlier Year to Year journal post which mentioned that when we think in a particular way for an extended period of time, it becomes easier for that method of thinking to be normal. They likened it to cutting a path through a forest, and returning through that way over and over. “I’m as good at writing as my peers” is, at first, a humbling thought. A healthy one. An important one. But when I retread that thought over and over it becomes tinged with fear. “I’m still not as good at writing as my peers.” “I’ll never be as good at writing as my peers.” “I’ll never be good at writing.” And as the thought morphs and I think it more often, it isn’t just something I think. It’s someone I’ve become. “I’ve lost faith in my ability to write. I’m a failure.”
Welcome to Kristian at 23. He has one thing he’s good at, and he doesn’t think he wants to do it anymore, because he’s not good enough at it.
So how do I get out of that thought pattern? Because it is, I think, a little worse than writer’s block. Well, the answer isn’t the easiest one, because the way I’ve arrived at my current state of being is through intense levels of discontent. Unhappiness which reaches deep enough for me to do some soul searching. What’s going in there? Every time I try to reach for some golden answer that helps it all make sense, I find nothing but this miasmic grey mire which is impossible to give shape to. But on the way there, I find indicators. Sources of unhappiness. Nothing I can cure all at once, but it’s time to start giving it a go. What’s this big, pulsing orb of negativity right here? Why, it says, “I’ve lost faith in my ability to write. I’m a failure.”
Getting back into writing wasn’t going to solve a lot of my discontentment. It hasn’t. In fact, it might cause more if I fall off the writing wagon, because that makes the discontented thought that much stronger. “I’ve lost my ability to write. I’m a failure.” How bad does that sound? God! So giving the Writing Prompts subreddit a go was terrifying. Not least because my original motivation to become a writer hinged on me having an outstanding gift that made me unique, in a sense, and that subreddit is full of writers who are better than me, all of which get quite a lot of attention for their work. Now, I’m quite accustomed to putting a lot of effort into creating content without much of an audience – look at my Youtube channel – but I’m okay with that, because the act of creating the content is a hobby. Writing is my calling, though. If I fail to grab people with it, that’s a bit different.
So there it is, I can’t. I can’t because, because, because. And that’s why I don’t. And I can’t because I don’t. So how do you break that cycle? You just do.
So I did.
I wrote a 700 word short story based on a writing prompt and I posted it in the thread along with the countless other stories. And I got one upvote, and nothing else.
And my world didn’t end.
So I did it again.
Writing is a muscle which needs to be stretched. It’s not a secret weapon to use when you feel like cashing in on your destiny. It’s not the solution to your myriad of other problems. It’s a talent, but without practice, it isn’t a discipline. So I’m practising. And if someone mocks my writing or tells me it’s awful, my world still might end, because that’s not an area I have thick skin for. But withdrawing from my calling because my world might end is redundancy of the highest order, as the possibility of my world ending is less destructive than refusing to start living in it.
Further reading:
E.K Johnston: Your Brain is a Forest (This again – haven’t re-read it but this is where the forest analogy came from)
The Weekly Deathmatch #57 – Overwatch – On Writing (This post, but articulated differently)
Writing Prompt 001 – Deliverance (Oh god I’m posting them here too)
Writing Prompt 002 – Lonely Road (Oh man oh jeez pardon my rust)
Perpetually Perturbed 