This is The Write Now podcast with Sarah Werner, Episode 10: What Do We Really Mean When We Say That Writing Is Our Passion?

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Welcome to Write Now, the podcast that helps aspiring writers to find the time, energy and courage you need to pursue your passion and to write every day. I’m your host, Sarah Werner. And in today’s episode, I want to talk about a word that gets thrown around a lot in creative circles. And that word is passion. I’m not talking about those steamy romance scenes that you may or may not be writing in your book. Rather, I’m referring to the word passion as I use it in my tagline for the show. When I say that this is the podcast that helps aspiring writers to find the time, energy, and courage you need to pursue your passion and to write every day.

Usually when the word passion is used to describe a writer, it means that they use a lot of strong feeling words in their writing. Creative people in general, who are deemed passionate are often very flamboyant or driven or obsessed, or they go about creating their art with very powerful words, with words of emotion and deep feeling.

But I’m not talking about having passion. I’m talking about having a passion, something that’s more than just a hobby. I always have this horrible problem with my hobbies where, I don’t know, for like three months, I’m super into knitting and I will knit 6,000 things, and then I will put my knitting needles down and never knit again. Similarly, I have been through painting phases, flower arranging phases. How girly is that? Various blogging phases, traveling phases.

But I do have a few hobbies that I’ve stuck with over the years. I love gardening, even though I’m incredibly terrible at it, and pretty much everything I grow dies because I can never seem to remember the exact proportion of water a certain plant needs that is different from the certain proportion of water and sunlight that another plant needs. And should this go in the east window or the south window, or will this freeze if I leave it outside overnight? If you have a plant that you want killed, send it to me and I will kill it. And yet I love it. I love watching the little tiny spears of green poke out of the ground in spring. I love it when things bloom and I’m like, “Hey, I didn’t kill this just yet.” It’s a good feeling. I like to help people. That’s one of the reasons I get so over committed, is because one of my hobbies is saying yes and helping people.

But what separates writing from these other hobbies? Why do I dare to call myself a writer and not a gardener, albeit a terrible one? Or a painter? Or a helper of people? It’s because, and I think that you might agree with this, it’s because writing for me exists on a higher level than any of those other activities. It’s more than an activity. It’s more fulfilling than just knitting a scarf and saying, “Hey, I knitted a scarf.” When I finish writing something, I feel like I have fulfilled some kind of purpose.

With any hobby, I think that you’re motivated to do it simply because you enjoy doing it. And that enjoyment is fulfilling, or maybe the fulfillment is enjoyable. You can kind of take that either way. The fulfillment we get out of our passions that’s different from the fulfillment we get out of other hobbies or our paid work, is that perhaps our passions are even more intrinsically motivated than our hobbies. So I’m motivated intrinsically to pursue my hobbies because I am fulfilled by them.

But perhaps a passion takes that a step deeper. Perhaps a passion is an externalization of our most internal self, the most, not necessarily intimate, but the most authentic way we can share our identity or our soul with someone else.

So is passion rooted in feeling? Is it rooted in the desire to do or feel something? The desire to feel fulfillment? Or do you think that it’s more about purpose? So is writing something that you believe you are made to do? Or called to do? Or compelled to do? Is the act of writing then for you a fulfillment of purpose rather than desire? I’m not saying you have to pick one, because I think that these things that we’re passionate about, writing or marine biology, or saving the environment, or driving fast cars, or knitting, these things that we’re passionate about are expressions of ourselves that we are fishing out using skills and talents.

So can you still have writing without passion? Of course. If you write for a living, or if you write things you don’t necessarily feel compelled from the depths of your soul to write for a living such as articles about slipform construction or blog posts about toilet seats or what have you, you can still write very well about these things. And I think that there’s a debate that can be had about whether that writing is as good or as meaningful as more artistically and emotionally motivated writing.

But I don’t want to have that discussion right now. I hope you can forgive me. I don’t like thinking about judging the quality of writing or the value of writing based on how much emotion or feeling or indeed passion has been put into it. I think there are technical writers who write beautifully and well, and I think there are artistic writers who, even though they are very passionate about the subject and they are writing from the very depths of their heart, write fairly terribly. So it’s not necessarily a simple equation of more feeling equals better writing, or more passion equals better work.

In fact, I write without passion all the time. I do technical writing from time to time, and it is different from the writing I do for myself. It’s very different for my creative writing, but I wouldn’t necessarily say that one is quantifiably better than the other or superior to the other, because with one, I’m helping people to understand a concept or to use a piece of machinery, and with the other, I’m sharing insights or describing something in a more or less artistic way. But one is not necessarily better than the other.

So do you need passion to write? Is passion essential for writers? I think it certainly helps. I think, and this is something that I took away from Stephen King’s wonderful book, On Writing, a reader can tell when the writer is having fun, but he doesn’t use the word passion. At the end of the day, I value anything that brings you to writing, whether it’s more passion than talent or more talent than passion. Either way, you are taking part of an ages old craft that allows you to share your thoughts and bare your soul to people who you will never meet and who will never meet you, except through your words.

Sometimes you go to talks or conferences. And inevitably there is one speaker who begins their speech with, “Webster’s defines the meaning of passion as…” Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. Such is the nature of cliches.

But what I’m getting at here is that I did some searching around the word passion, and depending where you look, the word passion came from the Greek or Latin root. And I read somewhere that these are what’s called false cognates, which means they sound the same, but that’s just a coincidence, even though both of those root words mean to suffer or to do harm. So that might strike you as odd. Does that mean that we as writers must suffer? Does it mean that suffering brings extra value to our work? Does it mean that others will suffer because of our devotion to our passion? Does it mean that our passions are something that require the act of suffering? Or is a passion something that you’re simply willing to suffer for?

You’re probably most familiar with the word passion as a synonym for suffering, in a sort of religious context. You may or may not have seen or read about “The Passion of the Christ”, but that’s where I think the connection is made between love and suffering, explicitly in popular culture. So have you ever suffered for your craft? Have you ever suffered for your writing? Is it necessary for writers to suffer? I know that on one side, we certainly, I think, wrestle with words, with subjects. Writing is hard work. I think that if you’re listening to this podcast, you totally get that. But have you suffered and do you need to suffer to write well? Is that the kind of passion that we’re talking about? And why have we taken that word and turned it into something that we hold so dear? I kind of wish I was an etymologist and I could explain this perfectly to you, but I can’t.

I can tell you that historically, there has been a deep connection between not just writers, but artists in general, if we’re going to open that category up a bit more, with artists and suffering. There’s a high suicide rate among artists and writers. There is a high rate of depression among creative types, among artists, among writers. I even had a podcast episode, episode three, “Writing As Self Care”, in which I talk about using writing as therapy or a way to heal after a painful event. There was a wonderful woman who left a comment on my website months ago saying that she was processing the death of her husband and she was doing so and dealing with her grief by writing a book of poetry. And so we can ask, does art come from suffering? Or do we creative types simply better process our suffering through art?

One of my favorite writers, in fact, probably my favorite writer with a capital F, is James Baldwin, who was one of the great thinkers at the forefront of the civil rights movement. I have never read another writer whose words I would call so deeply passionate. And I have never read another writer who was so honest about their own suffering from internal and external circumstances. He’s a good writer, but I don’t think his work is necessarily good or better because he’s passionate about writing. I think his suffering has fueled a need to create, and he is simply a very, very gifted and talented creator, and that not necessarily his passion for writing, but his passion for equality and civil rights and making a better life for future generations, I think all that stuff comes through and lends his writing a power that it might not have if he was writing about different types of home insulation or towels. But is he a better writer because he suffered? I don’t think so. I think that he is more emotionally moving because he wants to change things. I think that his suffering gave him a cause to write about, and he used his skills and talents to shape powerful words around those emotions of hurt.

But what I want to say here is that you don’t need to make yourself suffer to make yourself a better writer. I want to be very clear about that. To become a better writer, you need to write, you need to practice, you need to solicit constructive feedback from people who are better writers than you. Going out and getting angry about social issues, or going out and seeking out painful situations or harmful opportunities, you won’t become a better writer because of that. I promise suffering does not make a better writer.

In fact, when we’re talking about passion, there are two types. There’s harmonious passion and obsessive passion. One of these compliments your life and brings you fulfillment. The other takes over your life, and it can override your life and become detrimental to you and to those around you. Perhaps obviously, harmonious is the better of these two. This is when your love of the craft of writing remains under your control. When you view writing as part of your identity, when you are motivated to do it, because you find it as fulfilling. If you’re passionate about something in a harmonious way, it should improve your self esteem. When I write, I feel better about myself, and I like the way that feels. When your passion for writing is harmonious, you remain in control, and you can walk away from it when you want to.

So the other side of what we call the dualistic model is obsessive passion. Instead of recharging you, this kind of passion will run you into the ground. It’s defined by a lack of power or control. And this is the type of passion that your self worth depends on. It’s often defined as being destructive or detrimental or interferes with your work-life balance or your balance in general.

But you know what? I need to confess something to you. Sometimes I identify just a little bit more with the obsessive side of passion. In the very beginning of this podcast episode, I referred to passion as something you may feel called to do or compelled to do. And I think for me that writing is often a compulsion. I would love it if my passion for writing was harmonious, then I wouldn’t have to worry about all this work-life balance stuff. And I wouldn’t struggle so much with these terrible feelings that I get when I don’t write creatively. Maybe you’ve experienced this too. Maybe you’re just as obsessed as I am. But if I don’t write, if I go a long time without writing creatively, I kind of feel like crap. My self esteem plummets. I don’t feel like myself. My thoughts get all jumbled up and confused. I’ve even gotten actually physically ill before, probably from stress, but writing helps with that.

So this passion, looking at writing as a passion, is yours harmonious or obsessive or a little of both? Are we perhaps using it to alleviate suffering or are we suffering for it? I’m kind of hoping that overall my passion, my writing is harmonious because at the end of the day it is fulfilling, and I see it as a good and positive and healing force in my life. I see it as a way to use my talents and skills and to fulfill a purpose. But I think there’s always going to be that little grain of discomfort in our minds. And I know that sometimes, when I haven’t written for a while and I am suffering the effects of it, that I sometimes wonder if writing is a curse or a blessing or a little bit of each.

The reason that I’m doing this podcast is to help you follow your passion, so that it leads you into a good and fulfilling place, so that you can make room in your life for this thing that you, for whatever reason, need to do and are called or compelled to do. Initially, I wanted to record this podcast and come out with this answer, this final definition about the connection between writing and passion, and passion and suffering, and suffering and creation. But you can see that just goes into a big circle, which is how I feel this episode has gone. But what I want to do is help you pursue your passion, to follow your passion to a good place, to a healthy place, to a balanced place, between work and life and everything else, where it can be more than just a hobby, but where you can exercise your skill and your purpose and share your story, be it one of joy or suffering, or a little bit of both with the world.

So this week I got to tell you, I struggled with the book of the week. the next book in my book list, that giant pile of books by the side of my bed, was Cassandra Clare’s young adult novel, The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones. I selected this one in particular because I kind of wanted to get in on the young adult train of Divergent and Matched and all of these other books that I kind of lumped together in my mind as similar? And I had already read The Hunger Games, and I had already read Laini Taylor’s Daughter of Smoke and Bone. And I really liked those, they weren’t perfect, but they were really enjoyable, and so I was like, okay, what am I going to read next?

And I settled on The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones because, and get ready to judge me, I heard it had originally manifested as a piece of Harry Potter fan fiction. I don’t usually get the chance to read fan fiction, and so part of me was just like, you know what? I’m just going to read this and see if I can pick out who all the characters are supposed to be in the Harry Potter world. And for the first couple of chapters, it was intriguing and fun. But then after a while, I couldn’t quite shake the feeling that I was reading an overlay of something else, a plastic story from which the foundation had been stripped away. Because this novel started out as fan fiction, it was built on a foundation that already existed in popular culture and in the minds of its readers, presumably. And so read in that context, it works just fine.

But if you go into this book fresh with no preconceived notion of the underlying framework, which is assumed, but not necessarily presented to the reader, it can feel a little flimsy. I am of course, familiar with all seven of the Harry Potter books. I loved them immensely, and have re-read them several times. But I was not able to finish The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, which, as I should have stated minutes ago before I started all this rambling about context and foundations, is the story of a teenage girl who finds out that she is a part of a magical, I guess you could call it society. Then of course, she is sucked into an adventure that will change the fate of the world. I have nothing against books like that. Like I said, I love Harry Potter. But I couldn’t stand the thinness of the story that was built on a borrowed foundation. It was frustrating to read, because I couldn’t immerse myself in it. Now I say all of this only having read the first four chapters of this book. And so if I am wrong about it, please do feel free to contradict me.

This also raises an interesting point of when you’re reading a book and you’re not particularly enjoying it, do you feel compelled to finish it? Or are you comfortable setting it aside and moving on to another book. I used to feel compelled to finish every book I started. And then I realized precisely how many books there were in the world and decided I was not going to waste my time reading books that weren’t working for me when there were so many wonderful books in my pile to read. Hopefully I will be able to finish next week’s book, which is Lev Grossman’s The Magicians. So stay tuned. I believe that one also has a little bit of a relationship with the Harry Potter series. So that should be kind of fun to compare and contrast there a little bit.

There are several people that I would like to thank. Thank you to my Patreon supporters. You guys are awesome. Seriously, thank you. Thank you to all of you who have subscribed to my podcast on iTunes or Stitcher or via RSS. You guys are also amazing. And if you are in the Venn diagram between Patreon supporters and podcast subscribers, then you are doubly amazing. I want to thank my husband, Tim, who keeps me grounded in a good way, not the go to your room kind of way, yikes, and who shows me every day that life is worth living, even when my obsessive passion side kind of gets the worst of me. I’d like to think my podcasting mastermind group, which consists of my good friends, Peder Aadahl and Rohn Gibson, both of whom work with me at Click Rain, for their neverending passion for podcasting. Speaking of passion for podcasting, I have one more thank you to send out to Daniel J. Lewis, who runs The Audacity to Podcast podcast. He really helped me realize that podcasting was a passion, that it was something I wanted and needed and felt compelled to do. If you are looking to get into podcasting, I definitely recommend listening to The Audacity to Podcast.

And with that, this has been the Write Now podcast, the podcast that helps aspiring writers to find the time, energy, and courage you need to pursue your passion and to write every day. I’m Sarah Werner. And thank you so much for listening.

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