This is The Write Now Podcast with Sarah Werner, Episode 78: Under Pressure.

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Welcome to Write Now, the podcast that helps all writers to find the time, energy, and courage you need to pursue your passion and write. I’m your host, Sarah Werner, and today I want to talk about pressure.

Pressure can come from a lot of different places, and it can mean a lot of different things for a lot of different writers. And so, we’re going to explore a little bit about what pressure means, and what it means to be compelled to create, and why we feel those compulsions and all sorts of things. So, before we begin, full disclosure: I am recording this episode during the coronavirus pandemic. And this is a time when a lot of people are either being quarantined or are self-quarantined in order to help not spread sickness and horrible things.

And so, if you are quarantined or self-quarantined or what have you, I am as well. I thought it was a good time to create a podcast episode since I don’t need to be around other people to do that. But I think that how we interpret time spent alone or under quarantine, that’s something I wanted to talk a little bit about with you today under the topic of pressure. Like many writers who should be writing, I spend a lot of time on social media. I have several communities out there. I have my I Am A Writer community on Facebook. I have my Seriously Successful Podcasters Facebook group. I’ve got some groups on Discord and some other places. And so, I spend a lot of time on social media, managing these communities. And despite my best efforts, I often find myself outside of those communities looking through the infinite scroll of very, very addictive information.

And one thing that I’ve seen — I follow a lot of writers groups, and I’ve seen these things that say like, when Shakespeare was quarantined or waiting for this pandemic to pass he wrote King Lear. And shame on you, writers, if you’re not using this quarantine time to produce your master work. I even talked with my sister this morning, she’s also a writer. And she was expressing to me this pressure that she felt. And she’s like, I am mandated that I can’t go to work right now, and so I’m at home and this is always been my dream. I’ve always wanted this time and space in which I didn’t have the pressure to work, these other pressures, but now I have this pressure to create, I have this pressure to write. And she said something that was really interesting, and that was, I feel like I’ve been given this time to write at the expense of other people’s health.

So, wow. There’s a lot going on there. And I don’t know if this is something that you feel yourself. I don’t know if these are things that you’ve even seen floating around on the internet, but these are all examples of pressure. Now, pressure is not always bad. There’s the pressure of a deadline, which for me, I’m a pantser, I’m not really a very organized writer. For me, the pressure of a deadline is often what helps me to finish my work. I worked for a newspaper in college and that 2:00 AM publication deadline was often the thing that kept me going, if you will. Same thing is true of any papers I have to write. Like, oh, this is due Monday morning at 8:00 AM. Okay. That’s pressure. That’s good. It will help me create a good paper. It’ll help me get it in on time. That’s fine. That’s great.

There’s also positive peer pressure. I don’t know if you learned about peer pressure in like fourth or fifth grade like I did. But we were warned, stay away from the bad kids because they’re going to try to get you to do drugs and whatever, even though we were like eight or 10 years old or whatever. There’s bad peer pressure but then there’s also the good accountability pressure. So, there’s groups of writers who will lift each other up, who will check in on each other and say, Hey, you’re supposed to have chapter seven done by the end of this week. Are you going to have that ready? Or Steve, I really think you should write your novel. I really think you should do this. I think that if you don’t write this novel, you’re going to regret it. So please start it.

These can be positive and helpful types of pressure that can assist us when we’re feeling sluggish, when we’re in a period of fear, when we’re in a place of scarcity or doubt. A lot of times the friendly, positive pressure from other writers or from creatives, or simply from people who want to see us succeed and live our best lives, that kind of pressure can really help us. But there’s a very, very thin line between that kind of pressure and maybe well intentioned pressure that has negative connotations or negative results. So people who are on social media saying, Oh, Shakespeare used this pandemic to write King Lear or whatever it was, I’m trying not to pay too much attention to this, but we’ll just use that as our example. So people who are saying things like that, I think that they think that they’re being positive or they’re helping you to be proactive, but really what they’re doing in something like that is encouraging you to compare yourself with Shakespeare.

Last time I took a class on Shakespeare I was in college, so… grain of salt. But when I took that Shakespeare class, there was some debate still going on as to whether Shakespeare was even a single person or whether Shakespeare was like this conglomerate of writers. So, grain of salt, do not compare yourself to Shakespeare. In fact, do not compare yourself to anyone. Comparison will not do anything good for you unless you’re a really competitive person who thrives on comparison. And there are some people like that. So, kudos to you if that works for you. But from what I’ve found, comparison often simply invites judgment and generally not the positive kind. When we compare ourselves to other people, there’s a lot of things that happen. We tend to see only the best in the people that we’re comparing ourselves to. The best of the other person’s work that we’re comparing our work to.

And when we compare our work or ourselves to the best qualities of that other person or that other work, we fall short. And that’s a bad feeling. At the end of the day, comparison really doesn’t do a whole lot for us. All it does is to simply highlight our own flaws in our minds, make us feel bad about the progress that we’re making. And it takes away the joy that we get from creating. Because we’re not focused on the joy of creating, we’re focused on making something that’s better than or superior to whatever it is that we’re comparing ourselves or our work to. For me, I don’t write or create to prove anything to anyone else. I write because, Oh boy, well, there’s a lot of reasons I write. But I mainly write because it brings me joy and fulfillment. It makes me feel good. It makes me feel like I have worth, that I have a point in this world. It makes me feel like I can help other people. It makes me feel so many good and important things.

There’s an episode of the Write Now podcast from years ago, and it’s about creating your writer’s mission statement. If you don’t have a mission statement, I encourage you to go listen to that episode and create one. Think about why you’re creating. For me, it’s everything I just told you. It’s joy, it’s fulfillment. And to be 100% honest, if I am not in a place where I’m actively creating something, if I’m not working on some kind of project or other, I slide into a really bad depression. I’ve learned over the years that’s just how my internal chemistry works. I don’t know why it works like that. I’m sure there’s some psychologists and psychiatrists listening who would be able to explain that. But all I know is, if I want to be my best self, at my best possible mental health, in addition to taking my meds, I also need to write, I need to create, I need to have a project to work on.

So writing also helps keep me healthy. I don’t write to throw anything in anyone’s face. I don’t write to prove that I’m better than someone else. And maybe you do and that’s okay. This is a no comparison and no judgment zone. You can write for whatever reason feels best to you. But what I don’t want to happen, is for you to feel compelled to create by some kind of false pressure that will end up filling you with doubt and fear and judgment. One of my favorite books is Dune. And one of the most famous lines from that book is, fear is the mind killer. And when you fill your mind with fear and judgments and scarcity and comparison, there’s no real room to flourish and be creative. So regardless of when you’re listening to this episode, whether it’s here with us in March 2020, whether it is in the way future, or if you’re a time traveler, whether you’re maybe listening to this in 1918 or some year in the distant past, there is no pressure for you to write like Shakespeare.

There is no pressure for you to create your master work when you are sitting quarantined in your home, when maybe there’s things going on outside of your windows that are a little scary. Because here’s the thing about pressure, it can be real and it can be imagined. And even the real pressure is often imagined. It all comes down to how we understand our limitations and the limitations that are given to us. I think that for most writers, unless you’re writing against a very serious deadline, so if you have to get your book into your publisher by the end of the month, or if you have a terminal disease and you want to finish your project within a certain timeframe, I understand that. But I think a lot of the time pressure, especially if it’s a negative pressure, is a construct. And like I said earlier, it can be helpful, but it can also be damaging. Because when it gets rolled up and mixed up in fear and scarcity and judgment, it can put a real damper on your creativity.

So I haven’t talked yet about internal and external pressure. External pressure is the kind of pressure that comes from other people. So we touched on this briefly a little bit before. This can be the non self-imposed deadlines. This can be the positive or negative peer pressure exerted on you by other people in regards to your work or anything else. But then there’s this internal pressure. And this comes from our expectations of ourselves. It comes from often our hopes, often our fears, there’s a lot going on with self-imposed pressure. Sometimes we see something like this, be like Shakespeare and write something amazing while you’re quarantined. We see something like that and we begin to put pressure on ourselves, not for any real reason, but because we have an anxiety, a compulsion, to prove something, to be something, to do something when there’s not a real reason to do it at all.

We’re very suggestible, I think, myself included. And I can tell you, Oh boy, back when I was working on season one of Girl In Space, I was an anxious nightmare all the time. And I would say, Oh my gosh, I have to get episode whatever out, by this date. And it’s just not going to happen. And I’m staying up and I’m not eating, and I’m having heart palpitations, and I need another cup of coffee and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I remember my husband telling me, “Oh my gosh, Sarah, it’s okay. If you don’t get your episode out by this date, nothing is going to happen. That’s a self-imposed deadline.” I remember my arguments against it. I remember saying that I had to get it out by that date, because if I didn’t my show would not be consistent and my listeners would lose trust in me, and I would lose my audience, and I would let down my audience, and I would let down myself.

But what does it mean to have a self-imposed deadline? What does it mean to create your own internal pressure? What are the stakes? What are the expectations? Was I really going to lose my audience if my show was a day or two late? How did I understand the expectations of my audience? Now, of course, there were external forces that exacerbated the pressure. I was starting to get one star reviews like, okay, this person never posts on time. And where’s the next episode of Girl In Space. And, Hey, the show would be really great if the creator would learn to post on a regular schedule. But what does all of that mean? This is going to be one of those episodes where I don’t necessarily have all the answers. But I want to start planting these questions in your brain, because they’re definitely in my brain and I want to share them with you. I want to share this conversation about expectations, about the pressure that we put ourselves under and why.

I also want to encourage you to do a mental check-in and explore whether your deadlines, your expectations, and the pressures that you’re facing to create are motivated by love and joy, and not fear and scarcity. I want you to be in a place where you’re creating because you love to create and it’s fulfilling and awesome. And not necessarily because you’re terrified that you won’t write 30 books before you die. These are very, very real issues and fears. Also, I need to point out, that just because I want you to be creating from a place of love and joy and not fear and scarcity, I have to be really careful here, because I also don’t want to judge you and the reasons that compel you to create. I’m one of those people that down in the very depths of my heart, I just want everybody to be happy. And so I might be putting my own bias onto this. So, I’ll ask you to forgive me if you feel like I’ve judged you.

I also want to say, that if you feel like the pressure is getting to you, that is to say, if the pressure is pushing on you in a way that feels panicky, anxiety inducing, unhealthy, if you notice that you’re not getting enough sleep, if you notice that you have stopped taking care of yourself, if you notice that you are trying to squeeze yourself into a very small hole, figuratively or literally, that it’s okay, and you have permission not to write and not to suddenly turn into a production machine. The last episode of the Write Now podcast that I did, is all about what happens when writing isn’t necessarily writing. And I want you to know that you can use this time, if you have time right now, if you’re in a place where you are feeling pressure to create because you all of a sudden have time to do so. I want you to know that thinking counts as writing, journaling counts as writing, planning counts as writing, going for a walk can count as writing, reading a good book can count as writing.

You can use this time to read and feed your brain good nutritious stuff, stuff that it will then repurpose and reimagine into a collage of new creativity. I’m referencing a lot of old episodes today, but some of you may even remember, gosh, years ago, it may have been even like 2015. I did a Write Now episode about this hermitage that I did, a writer’s retreat out in the woods of Minnesota. I had a lot of pressure on myself then too. At that time I was still working for someone else, and so I had taken off time from work. I had used my precious PTO, my paid time off, to go on this trip. I spent gas money getting there. I spent money renting the cabin. I spent money stockpiling notebooks and pens and snacks. This writer’s retreat was a real investment for me.

And when I got out to this tiny cabin in the middle of the woods in north Minnesota, I sat down at my desk and I just, Oh, I can still feel it today. I remember the pressure. I remember sitting down at that desk and saying, well, Sarah, you’ve invested hundreds of dollars into this retreat. And you’ve used some of your precious days off, so now you better create your masterpiece. You better write like Mary Oliver, you better write something so amazing and astounding that the world will weep. So I sat there at my desk, looking out at the pine trees, paralyzed by fear, smushed, unable to move, unable to think because of the pressure I was suddenly under. That pressure at that time was just another form of fear. I was terrified I wouldn’t create something good enough to merit having spent all that money and time on a writing retreat.

I was scared that I wouldn’t be able to create anything good. That maybe underneath it all I wasn’t that good of a writer. During that retreat my attempts at writing were akin to wringing out a dry sponge. I went for walks. I recited mantras. I brought up Mary Oliver earlier because that’s what I was reading at the time, which made me feel really inferior because she is a master poet. I had time. I had space. I had pressure. So what do we do when we’re faced with this pressure, whether it’s positive or negative, whether it’s externally imposed or self-imposed. Like I said earlier, I don’t necessarily have any answers for you because this is such a complicated and subjective topic. But I can tell you that I want you to write for the right reasons, whatever those right reasons are for you.

And I want you to be in a place where you feel empowered and not bullied into creating. I want you to realize that you have immense worth as a human being, whether or not you’re in a good creative place right now. Your worth is not determined by what you create, what you accomplish or what you spend your time doing. You have inherent worth. You don’t need to write like Shakespeare to prove it. And you are a writer regardless of how you use your writing time. So if you feel like you’re not writing enough, or you’re not good enough, or you’re not creative enough, and all of the pressure is crushing you from a million different sides. I want you to take a deep breath and know that it’s okay to put one word after another. I want you to know it’s okay to create messy, terrible first drafts. I want you to know that it’s okay if the version of writing that you’re doing right now looks more like taking a walk or reading or meditating.

We all face pressure from time to time, it’s just part of being a writer. And you don’t have to prove anything by how you handle it. You just have to know that you can keep moving forward regardless of it. And that you’re allowed to give yourself a little bit of grace in the face of it.

I never make any of these Write Now episodes alone. I mean, even though I’m sitting here quarantined in a room, talking into my little foam tube of podcasting, I have so many people loving and supporting the work that I’m doing here. And I’m so grateful for each and every one of you. Today, I would like to shout out my Patreon patrons who give financially to help keep this show going. Those folks include Amanda King, Tiffany Joyner, Regina Calabrese, The Ostium Network, Susan Geiger, Sean Locke, Leslie Madsen, Amanda L. Dickson, Julian Vincent Thornburgh, Michael Beckwith, Sarah Lauzon, Selena Zhang, Maria Alejandro, Leslie Duncan, Rebecca Werner, and Gary Medina. Thank you all so much for your continued support of this show. I would not be able to do this without you.

Those of you who are interested in also supporting this show, if this is helpful for you, if you enjoy the work that I do here at the Write Now podcast, please consider becoming a patron on Patreon. Patreon is a secure third party donation platform where you can pledge a dollar per episode, $10 per episode, a billion dollars per episode, whatever feels right to you. You do only get charged if an episode comes out. So in these weeks where I don’t release an episode, you don’t get charged. And so it’s just a nice way to help support the work here that I’m doing. If you would like to become a patron, there should be a link in the show notes to this episode. Otherwise, you can go out to patreon.com/sarahrheawerner. That’s S-A-R-A-H R-H-E-A W-E-R-N-E-R.

If you are interested in supporting the show in non-financial ways, just tell somebody else about it, have them follow us on Twitter, have them subscribe to the show. If they don’t listen to podcasts, you can show them how to subscribe to a podcast. It’s a lot of fun sharing podcasts with people. Please do check out my website, sarahwerner.com where you will find the show notes for this and other episodes of the Write Now podcast. You can also download a couple of freebies from there. I have a podcasters roadmap that you can download for free. I also have a free webinar that’s going on right now. So if you’ve ever wanted to start your own podcast, you can do so. Just sign up for the webinar on my website. Otherwise, if you are looking to connect with me in other places, I mentioned earlier that I have some Facebook communities, the one that I would encourage you to join, if you are a writer, is the, I Am A Writer group on Facebook, just navigate to that. It’s facebook.com/groups/proudwriters, answer the questions there, and I will let you in.

It’s a great place to be. There’s thousands, I think, at this point of people in the group, and they’re all just wonderful, supportive. I intentionally keep the group very cultivated so that it’s a good, positive, and healthy place to be. So, I hope that you join us in one of those spaces. I also hope that you are doing well. I hope that you are filled with hope and joy in the face of bad things that might be happening. Please know that you are loved, you are worthy, you are valuable, and you are a writer.

And with that, this has been episode 78 of the Write Now podcast. The podcast that helps all writers to find the time, energy and courage you need to pursue your passion and write. I’m Sarah Werner, and I want you to know that you can write purely for the joy and delight of writing.

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