This is The Write Now Podcast with Sarah Werner, Episode 99: My 10 Biggest Writing Struggles.

 

Welcome to Write Now, the podcast that helps all writers, aspiring, professional, and otherwise, to find the time, energy and courage you need to pursue your passion and write. I’m your host, Sarah Werner. And I’m going to be the first person to admit that writing is difficult. Yes, we love it. Yes, we can’t live without it. But yes, it comes with its own fair share of struggles, and trials, and tribulations, and difficulties, and all of those things.

 

In fact, your own writing struggles might be the very reason that you are listening to this podcast in the first place. It’s kind of funny, when I first started planning this episode, it was originally titled My Five Biggest Writing Struggles, but I had so many writing struggles that I was like, “Well, let’s go ahead and make it 10.” And then I thought of a few more and I was like, you know what, no, we’re going to cut it off at 10, just so that I don’t scare people away by saying, “Oh yes, my top 100 biggest writing struggles,” because that sounds just a little bit overwhelming.

 

So I want to focus on 10. And these may be things that you struggle with as well. They may be completely foreign to you. They may be somewhere in the middle. You might empathize or sympathize with them. But at the end of this episode, I’m going to ask you to share your biggest writing struggle or struggles out in the comments for today’s episode. So today’s episode, episode number 99, has show notes out on my website., SarahWerner.com That’s S-A-R-A-H-W-E-R-N-E-R.com. And if you navigate to the bottom of the show notes for this episode, you’ll see a comment section. I would love to know, not only what your writing struggles are, your biggest writing struggles, but how you deal with them, or as we’ll talk about a little bit later in this episode, how you avoid them.

 

I know we’re going to get kind of real today and I think it’s going to be for the best. So let’s jump in to my 10 biggest writing struggles. These are not in any particular order of severity or anything like that. They are just literally in the order in which I thought of them. So struggle number one, thinking that I need to rely on anything outside of myself to write. I’m a little bit embarrassed to share this one. But you know what? I’m going to be a little bit embarrassed to share all of these. So I’m just going to go ahead and get used to it.

 

But sometimes when I sit down to write, if the conditions aren’t perfect in my mind, then I will often give up on writing right then and there, without even having touched a piece of paper or typed one word on my laptop. Like a lot of writers, the conditions under which I write, feel meaningful. And there are a lot of things that I rely on outside of myself to create those conditions. So for example, I like to write in perfect silence, or barring that, I like to have some kind of ambient sound or music without lyrics to help me sort of get into the zone and concentrate.

 

I also feel like I need a cup of coffee, or a cup of tea, or some kind of nice cozy, warm beverage. I feel like I need to be in a space that is conducive to writing. So where I have a comfortable place to sit and a comfortable ergonomic place upon which to write, some kind of surface. I also feel like I need a full glass of water nearby. I’m one of those people who just constantly chugs water all day. And I like to have a glass of water at the ready. So I won’t have to interrupt myself later to get up and get a new glass of water or any of that stuff.

 

I also often feel like I need to be in a certain mindset in order to write. And that if I’m not in the correct, or appropriate, or desired mindset, then there’s just no use to sitting down and writing. Now as Doris Lessing, very famously said, “The conditions will never be perfect.” There will always be some noise that leaks in. There will always be a point at which your coffee or tea goes cold. There will always be a point at which your kids come banging on the door, asking you for help reaching something on a high shelf. Thinking that I need the conditions to be perfect, thinking that I need to rely on anything outside of my own brain, and a sheet of paper to write is something that I struggle with. It’s a huge struggle for me.

 

And often it gets in the way of me actually sitting down and doing any work. When we start to think that we need to rely on anything outside of ourselves to write, we start to give ourselves excuses, more and more excuses, not to write. And there’s also this little insidious background notion that we, alone, are somehow not enough, that I as a person and simply not enough to sit down and to write something if I don’t have a cup of coffee, if I don’t have the right music, if I don’t have the right tool or implement or space.

 

When I go searching for “the right conditions” what I’m searching for is some kind of supplement to me, some kind of extra power outside of myself. And I have to remember, I don’t need that. I am enough as a creator. If this is something that you are nodding along with, if this is something that sparks a hint of recognition, and you say, “Oh, hey, me too.” Then I want to tell you that you are enough. It might be nice to have your fidget toy, or your cup of tea. But at the end of the day, your writing, your wisdom, your insights, those come from you, and just you. And you are absolutely enough to create them.

 

Struggle number two, thinking that I am a terrible writer or that I have somehow lost my ability to write. I very vividly remember texting my friend Jordan a couple of weeks ago and saying very ridiculously, “Help. I don’t think I know how to write anymore” To which she responded something along the lines of, “That’s not possible. I don’t think you’re going to forget how to write.” But as writers, we all have those mornings where we wake up and we’re really excited to read what we wrote the night before, and we sit down, and we open up our laptop or our notebook, or we take a look at what we’ve written, wherever it may be.

 

And we realize, “Oh, this is not good. I remember thinking last night when I wrote this, that it was amazing and mind blowing and incredible. But wow, reading it this morning, what was I thinking?” And sometimes disheartened feeling that we can feel after reading something that we remembered was great, and is actually not so great can keep us from moving forward, can keep us from writing. I think that this struggle of thinking that I’m terrible or have somehow completely lost my ability to write, is tied in with something that we’ve talked about on this show before, and that is imposter syndrome.

 

And I struggle with it every day. And maybe you do too. Maybe you wrestle with the thought that, “Oh, this is terrible. What I’m writing really sucks. Oh my gosh, I just hate this. Why am I even bothering?” And then you stop. It happens to me. I’ll have set aside some time to write, and I will sit down and just get completely overwhelmed with my own sense of inadequacy and terribleness. And I’ll look at my email inbox and say, “Well, I do have some emails that I need to respond to,” or, “I do have some social media work that I need to do for my personal brand,” or, “It’s a really nice time to go for a walk.”

 

And sometimes it is. But if we’re getting to the point where the struggle is actively intruding upon, or even destroying our writing time, then that’s a problem that we need to address. This is actually one of the reasons that I recorded the episode from, I guess not only two weeks ago, Permission To Suck, but also last week’s episode, which was Writers Risk and Potential Loss, because I needed to sort out my thoughts and my fears that were surrounding this subject of thinking that I’m a terrible writer or that I maybe have somehow lost my ability to write and create.

 

But as Jake tells Finn in Adventure Time, one of my favorite shows, “Sucking at something or being terrible at something is the first step to becoming sort of good at something.” If we want to improve, we have to move forward. Whether or not we think we’re terrible, or whether we think we’ve lost our ability to write, the only way that we’re going to get better is to write, is to go through that process, that slog, that mindset. And if we are able to let go of the judgment, if we’re able to, just a little bit, release the editor in our head that watches us write our first draft and says, “Oh, this is terrible. You’re never going to get anywhere.” Then I think we can move forward.

 

Struggle number three, remembering that writing is fulfilling and joyful. Now I struggle with this one, not because I hate joy and fulfillment, because I don’t. I think that that’s something that we’re all looking for and something that if you are in any way interested in writing, or in any way wanting to call yourself a writer, it’s something that you have experienced or want to experience, the joy and fulfillment that comes with writing. And this is a struggle for me because, a) sometimes writing gets difficult and remembering that I love doing this can be a little bit challenging when we are stuck wrestling with a problem in our plot. If someone has maybe noticed that, oh, your character doesn’t really have a strong motivation here.

 

It can get really frustrating and really difficult, but even more than that, understanding that you are allowed to enjoy writing, that you are allowed to enjoy your life, that you have permission to find joy and fulfillment in writing, and that you are worthy of joy and fulfillment. That is a huge struggle. I grew up thinking whether this is something I was taught directly, or just something that I picked up. I grew up thinking that suffering was noble and that martyring yourself was a good thing to do. And that denying yourself joy or fulfillment, was somehow a good and laudable thing. Maybe you identify with this and maybe you don’t. But if you do identify with this, I want to tell you that writing can be extremely fulfilling and full of great joy. And you are allowed to experience fulfillment and joy in your life. And not only that, you’re worthy of it.

 

Struggle number four, sitting still and focusing on my writing. So I don’t know if it’s just my adult ADD, or if this is something that a lot of people struggle with. But for me, it is incredibly hard for me to sit still and focus on something. It’s almost as though my brain wants to be distracted. It’s almost as though I am actively searching for distraction when I sit down to write. I almost feel a sense of relief when I sit down to write, and I’m about to plunge into my work and I get a notification on my phone, oh, it’s a text, oh, I’d better reply to that immediately.

 

I have always greatly admired people who are able to sit down and just get into doing their work. And they don’t have things like unanswered emails, or unanswered texts gnawing at the edges of their brain. One of my favorite productivity books is Deep Work by Cal Newport. And in it, he talks about the importance of letting yourself go deep into your work, and to focus on it solely for large periods of time. And this has always been something that has been like a Holy Grail for me. I search for it. I reach for it. But it’s so often eludes my grasp, because I get in my own way. I give in. I check Twitter. I search for those little hits of dopamine that you get when somebody likes your response to one of your tweets

 

I respond to that text message. I respond to that email and I end up not doing the work that I need to be doing. I’ve thought about this a lot, because it’s such a big problem for me. And I think that for me, this trouble with sitting still, and focusing, and not being distracted comes from fear. It comes from fear of allowing myself to sink deep into my work, and to sort out the big problems, and to discover new and potentially frightening things about myself or the world.

 

It’s so much easier, and it’s so much quicker, to find fleeting fulfillment in social media notifications. But at the end of the day, if I give into that, I’m only cheating myself. I’m not cheating the system. I’m not cheating death. I’m not doing any of that. I am only depriving myself of a meaningful day of exploration and writing. If this is something that you also struggle with, I had to take some drastic action lately. And I installed a program on my computer that does not let me access the internet while I am writing. It is called Freedom.TO, and it costs money and I paid for it. And now I can work.

 

And if my little autopilot brain starts to click over to Twitter, or Facebook, or Instagram, or some other place, this program does not let those programs open. And that’s on my laptop. And on my phone, I have disabled all notifications, even for texts. I do not see if I have new texts. I do not see if I have new emails. I do not see if I have new alerts on any social media platform. For me, that was something that I needed to do. It pained me to do it because I love staying up to date with friends and family. And I love knowing when my work very immediately resonates with someone else, but it’s been really wonderful.

 

If you need to, you can get even more extreme and lock your phone in a drawer. You can just disconnect from the internet entirely, but I encourage you to think about what is it that frightens you about going deep into your work? What is the appeal of the distraction? And what can you do to begin sorting that out?

 

Struggle number five, is numbing and escaping from writing. What I mean by this is I will often escape writing. I will often dull my emotions or avoid them entirely. And I will do that by going to sleep. Different people have different numbing mechanisms, and those can tend to be alcohol, or drugs, or TV, or exercise. My numbing object of choice is sleep. I love sleep. I love that I don’t need to worry, or think about anything when I’m asleep. It is just a place of relaxation and freedom for me.

 

But even though sleep is technically good for you, I’ve been using it in a bad way. It’ll be like 9:30 PM, and I’ll sit down to do some writing and I’ll say, “Am I tired? I think I’m tired. I think that I should go to sleep, instead of having a cup of tea and working through this chapter.” And maybe this is something that you do with either sleep, or with some other coping mechanism. And again, there’s a really fine line here because sleep is not bad for you. Exercise is not bad for you. If they become a crutch, if they become an excuse for you to avoid or escape your true work, that’s what I struggle with. That’s the problem.

 

I think the core issue here is to explore what it is that you are numbing and why. What am I avoiding either feeling or thinking about or experiencing? What is it that I am avoiding? What am I hiding from? I don’t have any easy answers for this one, because I don’t think there are easy answers for this one. Well, I guess if you have an easy answer for this one, let me know in the comments for today’s episode and I will thankfully take you up on it. But this is definitely something that I struggle with every day is how much easier it is to go to sleep, than it is to sit down and work through my work.

 

Struggle number six, this one you may identify with, or you may not. And either one of those is okay. But ever since I started writing full time for myself and connected my creative work with money, I’ve really struggled with what I do to relax, and unwind, in my free time. So writing used to be my hobby. Writing used to be the thing that I would sit down and find cathartic after a long and frustrating day at the office. Writing used to be the thing that would fill me up after a long day had emptied me out of joy, of energy, of fulfillment.

 

I would look forward to coming home from work and losing myself in my story, but things change a little bit when money enters the equation, when your writing becomes a have to and not a want to. And I hate saying it, I don’t want it to be true. And maybe I need to do some mindset work around this. But I’m almost at a point where I need some kind of hobby, because my inclination is to write all day, and then in the evening say, well, it’s time to relax and recharge and write some more.

 

And it’s such a weird thing to struggle with. And I want to acknowledge that. It’s like, well, my job is eating ice cream all day, and now I’m sad that I have to eat more ice cream. And it’s like, what kind of a problem is that? That’s not a problem, Sarah. That’s like a first world problem. That’s like, “Oh, I have too much money. And I don’t know what to do with it. Oh, woe is me.” And yet it’s something that I legitimately struggle with. How do you relax, and recharge, and refill your cup? When the thing that you used to do, to do that, is now taking your energy and emptying you out? What do you replace it with? Do you replace it?

 

It’s such a weird problem. I have noticed that I am reading more than I ever have in my entire life. I’ve realized that I’ve turned to books. So reading and absorbing information and stories as a way to recharge myself in the way that writing used to. I’ve been listening to more podcasts. I’ve been doing more journaling. And I’ve even started a “just for fun” writing project that I can work on outside of my work hours. But it continues to be something that simply confounds me of how it’s even possible that this could be a struggle.

 

Struggle number seven, setting expectations. This one’s going to be a little bit more generic, because we all struggle to some degree with setting expectations. How do we know what to expect from ourselves? How do we know what to expect from the world around us, from our readers, from our audience, from the publishing world? How do we establish healthy, reasonable, and realistic expectations in a world that encourages us to either give up, or to shoot for the stars for something that’s completely unrealistic?

 

I work with a lot of writers and podcasters and creators, and one of my favorite questions to ask is what does success mean for you? But most of the people who I talk to don’t know how to answer that question, because they don’t know what they should expect. They don’t know what success should mean for them. They don’t know what baseline to shoot for. And the struggle here is between setting those expectations way too low, and under serving yourself and not pushing yourself in the right way, versus setting those expectations way too high and risking being disappointed when you don’t reach them and to giving up.

 

We hinted at this a little bit in struggle number two, which was thinking that I’m terrible, or that I’ve lost my ability to write. When we set expectations for our work, and we judge our work based on those expectations, and the struggle comes from when those expectations meet reality. This is one of the reasons why I encourage writers to work with a writer’s group or form a community with other writers, or even work with a writing mentor. And that is so that you can gauge what’s possible and what other people are doing, but also not compare yourself, or your unique journey, or where you are on your unique journey with everyone else.

 

So there’s a tension there between setting an expectation for yourself and comparing yourself competitively to other writers. I think I’m going to do a separate Write Now Podcast episode about expectations, because it’s such a rich and difficult topic. But for now, I just want to list it here as one of the things that I struggle with. And one of the things that you might struggle with as well.

 

Struggle number eight, is something that I’ve talked about before. And so I won’t spend a whole lot of time on it. But number eight, finishing what I start. I have done an episode of the Write Now Podcast about finishing what you start. It is episode number 72. So you can hear me talk about it at length there, but here, I just want to say it is so hard for me to finish a project when there are so many sparkly, shiny, and new projects that I could be starting.

 

I am so easily distracted. I’m like a magpie with a shiny object. I’m like, oh, why work hard and wrap up all these plot holes with this project when I can drop it and go start something fun. Maybe you struggle with this, maybe you don’t. But I had to add this one to the list because it is just very, very classic me.

 

Number nine, knowing which opportunities to take and which opportunities to decline. So as you move on in your writing journey, you will get more and more opportunities coming your way, whether it’s to collaborate on a project with someone else, whether it is to sign this book deal, or that book deal, whether it is to work on this poetry book, or if you want to start your memoir, whether it’s somebody approaching you with speaking opportunities, or book signing opportunities, or job opportunities. Opportunities will come your way. And it is up to you and solely up to you to choose which ones you will say yes to, and which ones you will say no to.

 

This is extremely hard for me. This is a huge struggle for me, and maybe it is for you too, because maybe you, like me, are a people pleaser and you love to see people’s faces light up when you tell them, “Yes, I will run your event. Yes, I will drive over two states to come speak at your event. Yes, I would love to co-author a book with you.” But while it feels good to say yes, it feels really, really terrible to realize that you’ve committed to something that you don’t actually want to do, or you’ve committed to something that is a good opportunity, but what it does is get in the way of a better opportunity, or even worse, it gets in the way of you doing the work that you actually need to be doing.

 

This happened to me in a huge way. After I released the finale of Girl In Space, season one. Well, technically after that, I went through a huge period of burnout and it was a very awful experience. But I kept choosing opportunities and saying yes to opportunities that were not seasoned two of Girl In Space, which was what I wanted to be working on, and what I felt I should be working on. I was saying yes, to speaking gigs. I was saying yes to my business. I was saying yes to other projects. And they weren’t bad. It wasn’t like I was saying yes to going on jewel heists or anything. At least not that I can recall.

 

I was saying yes to things that were good for my career. I was saying yes to things that were making money. But were they the best things to say yes to? Were they the best opportunities to take? This is something that I struggle with because you don’t always know. And in fact, you rarely know what the outcome will be when you say yes to something. During this period, I agreed to help run a conference, which I talked myself into by saying, “Oh, it’ll put me in the good graces of this person and this person. And I’ll be able to meet and network with all of these people, and give these underrepresented creators a place to shine.”

 

But ultimately, it was not a good decision. It was not an opportunity that I should have taken. But I didn’t know that until after I had taken it. So this remains a huge struggle to this day. And I think that it’s something that we just need to learn to do as we move forward in our writing journeys. I think sometimes we need to take opportunities that don’t work out for us so that we can understand, oh, this is why this didn’t work out for me, and this is why I will never be running a conference again. Or maybe you’ll find that running conferences is your true love, and that’s awesome. And you never would have discovered that love if you hadn’t agreed to help run a conference.

 

But I think that something that can help us discern what we can say yes to, and what we should decline is the realization that saying yes to one thing often means saying no to many other things. And that not all opportunities have your best interests at heart. And so you have to realize, what is important to me? In this season of my life, what is it that I need to be focusing on? What is important to me? Go back to your mission statement, go back to your vision if you need to. Is what you’re saying yes to is the opportunities that you’re taking, distracting you from what is truly important to you? And still even with that knowledge, it might still be a struggle, which is why it’s on this list for me.

 

All right. The final struggle for today, which, it’s not the final struggle. There are so many other things that we struggle with. But the final one that I want to talk about today is needing accountability from others, versus using other people as a crutch. If you need to lean on other people, that can be a good thing. It’s a good thing to be a member of a writing community. It’s a good thing to have a support system and a support network. But what I struggle with is when I begin to rely on other people too much, and I lose the reliance on myself to move forward and create meaningful things.

 

This is one of those struggles that I’ve only just realized, and I’m not entirely sure what to do about it, or how to deal with it, or how to discern when it’s problematic and when it’s not. A I asking to be held accountable for something as a way to ditch the responsibility that I need to be taking for my own work? Or am I simply going to my community and asking for encouragement? I struggle with this because it’s really hard for me to tell. And I don’t necessarily know the long standing consequences that come from self-reliance versus relying on someone else.

 

So if you have any insights on this, if you have any insights on any of these writing struggles, if you have your own writing struggles that you deal with that are different from these, or that are the same as these, let me know. Head over to the show notes for today’s episode out SarahWerner.com. Again, that’s Episode 99 out at S-A-R-A-H-W-E-R-N-E-R.com. Scroll down to the comments section and let me know. Let our community know what it is that you struggle with most as a writer.

 

Our 100th episode of the Write Now Podcast is coming next week. And I am just so grateful. I’m so grateful to you as a listener. I am so grateful for the people who have supported me in my podcasting journey and my writing journey. And I am incredibly grateful for the financial support from my wonderful, amazing patrons over at Patreon. Patreon is a secure third party donation platform that allows you to donate $1 per episode, $2 per episode, et cetera, whatever you feel like the show is worth. You can do that by going over to patrion.com. That’s P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com/SarahRheaWerner. That’s S-A-R-A-H R-H-E-A W-E-R-N-E-R.

 

Or, by once again, going out to the show notes for today’s episode and clicking on the help support this podcast button or link. Special thanks go out to Amanda L. Dickson, Julian Vincent Thornburgh, Laurie, Leslie Madsen, Regina Calabrese, Sean Locke, Susan Geiger, TJ Bricke, Tiffany Joyner, Leslie Duncan, Ricardo Lugo, and Sara Lauzon. Thank you all so, so very much for your continued support of the show. I truly appreciate it. 

 

And with that, this has been episode 99 of the Write Now Podcast, the podcast that helps all writers, aspiring, professional, and otherwise, to find the time, energy, and courage, you need to pursue your passion and write. I’m Sarah Werner, and I’m going to go face my writing struggles.