What’s Keeping You From Writing? – WN 001

This is the Write Now podcast, episode one: What’s Keeping You From Writing?

[Intro song.]

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 I’d like to kick off this podcast with a question: Why don’t we write if it’s our passion?

This is a question that I’ve been asking myself for the past several years now. And I thought that other people might be asking it too. And this is, in fact, the reason that I wanted to start this podcast. It’s because it’s been about two or three years since I’ve written anything, I guess, even remotely good or worthwhile or satisfying from a creative standpoint. And the problem with this is that, probably much like you, I view myself as a Writer with a capital W. It’s always been part of how I define myself. It’s always been part of my identity.

You probably have a very similar story. I started writing when I was very little. I loved writing, it was just natural to me. I was a voracious reader. I read everything I could get my hands on. And I emulated what I read in those stories. And I made my own stories and illustrated them. And this is way more than you want to know. But I kept writing and I loved it, and I found it to be fulfilling. And I found it to be central to my happiness. I also found that, not to be that person, but I was rather good at it. I had people recognize me, and you’ve probably had the same thing. You’ve had people tell you that your poetry is very moving or your journalistic style is awesome. And that’s terrific. That’s part of why we internalize that so much. It’s because we realize we have talent.

But I’ve been hiding from my talent. And the question becomes, why would I do something like that? Why would anybody hide from their talent? Why would anybody sane hide from their talent, I guess? I thought about it. Why would we hide from something that we’re good at?

So I thought about it, and I came up with some factors. And I’m going to leave it up to you to decide if they are excuses or legitimate reasons. But either way, I came up with a list of five reasons that a writer may not write.

We’ve all had bad jobs before. The kind of job where you’re stuck at a desk, you’re stuck somewhere, you hate it with every fiber of your being. And you have that one coworker, that one manager, that you just want to kind of murder and you know you shouldn’t, so you don’t because murder is wrong. I don’t want to go on a murder tangent. So I won’t.

But you’re at this job that is just vastly, vastly below your skill level, and you’re bored and you’re frustrated. And you can do your day’s work in about 20 minutes. And then you go home at night and you ask yourself, what am I doing? Is this all there is to life? Like really, is this it? If I retire when I’m 70, do I really have another half century of sitting at this desk and staring at this spreadsheet and inputting these numbers? After a while it becomes more than you can bear. If that sounds familiar to you, I myself was in this very situation for several years after I graduated from college. I had a degree in English, specifically writing, and I was all about truth and beauty. And I was never going to work for the man. I was never going to sell my soul for money.

So I didn’t go into marketing. I didn’t go into anything creative. I got a job at a software company where I had that manager, and that coworker that just made my life miserable. But every night I would go home and I would sit down at my computer and the words would just come out. And it was a magical experience. The words that came out were very emotional and very passionate. But they were also meaningful because they came from a place that was hurting and grieving. And they created for me, at least, a path of healing. Some people say that writing is cathartic, and I believe that’s 100% true. During that time I was writing to heal myself. I was finding alternate storylines for my life that I could live after work. I could feel like a person. I felt like there was meaning to life and that I was really living.

That was my bad job. I went through a lot of bad jobs. Most people do. And often it’s not the jobs themselves that are bad. Often it’s an experience with a coworker or manager, or often just not the right fit for your personality, for your skillset, for your level of interest. And that’s okay. In 2007, I got what I call a good job. I was hired by a web development, an online marketing firm, as their first official content strategist. And in that position, I essentially got to create my own job description and sail my own ship through these weird uncharted waters, where digital meets art meets marketing meets copywriting meets strategy. And I found that I absolutely loved it. Every day I get to use creativity and strategy, and combine that with my passion for the web, for information, for knowledge, for helping others. I love it. I absolutely love it. The people I work with are amazing. They’re smart. They’re funny. They know what they’re doing. I trust them all completely.

I am super happy with where I am right now. And I hope that one day you find a place like that too. But really, not to sound like a pessimist because I’m not, sometimes there’s hidden problems even within the best situations. The problem used to be that I hated my job and I was angry, and I felt unfulfilled, frustrated, and unsatisfied. But now that I’m satisfied and happy in my daily work, I’ve lost that drive. I’ve lost the need to go home and accomplish something. I’ve lost the anger and the frustration that used to fuel my writing. And so, I’ve lost a little bit of what helped me create my art. It’s probably a healthy loss. I am probably better off now that I’m not angry and frustrated all the time, but at the same time, I don’t have any fuel for the creative fire.

I also sometimes simply don’t have the creative energy left when I get home. Sorry if it sounds like I’m whining, I’m totally not. I don’t mean to. But it’s hard when you put your heart and your soul into your work, and you come home and you sit down at your desk and you realize how tired you are and how nice it would be to marathon something on Netflix, whatever it is you prefer the West Wing, X-Files whatever. And we’re going to talk in just a little bit about that tiredness, about work life balance.

But for now, let’s go to the second reason that I stopped writing. To tell you the truth. I got really, really disheartened. I tend to be a very picky reader. And I hope that doesn’t make me sound like a snob because I love all types of literature. I love reading poetry just as much as I love reading a good bodice-ripper, and I have a special place in my heart for science fiction, hard Sci-Fi science fantasy, a cozy mystery, I truly love all genres of writing, but there’s good and bad examples of each.

And so, I spent some time cultivating this wonderful reading list of the top books in every genre that I’ve always wanted to read. And I started to read them. And as I started to read them, two things started to happen. I was incredibly uplifted and amazed by the talent that these writers had, by the stories that they were able to tell. I remembered why I wanted to become a writer so that I could create things like this. But the second thing that happened, was that I realized just how far I had to go. I realized that I wasn’t as good as these writers. And as someone who’s always been just a little bit competitive, and by a little bit, I mean a lot, I got really disheartened. “I can’t write a better book than this?” I would say. Setting down my copy of Pattern Recognition by William Gibson. I can never describe things like that. I’ll never be able to create the same twists and turns that you can find in Mark Danielewski’s House of Leaves.

I’ll never be able to create characters as memorable and lovable as the characters that Elizabeth Peters creates in her Amelia Peabody series. I’ll never be as weird as Stephen King. I’ll never be as brilliant as James Baldwin. I’ll never be as smart as Agatha Christie. Heck I won’t even be as fun as Jim Butcher, and so on and so on. It’s just so easy to fall into that pool of despair, and to lay there looking up from the bottom as good book after good book washes over you. I will always, always, always advise readers to read while they write. To read good stuff while they write, but to be very, very careful. And I’ll have a completely different session on this, not to compare themselves to the writers that they’re reading.

The third reason that I stopped writing was fear. This is another topic that I want to have a special podcast episode dedicated to, but for now I just want to say that for whatever reason, I am afraid. And I don’t know exactly what I’m afraid of. It seems silly to be afraid of your own talent. It seems silly to be afraid of a blank page, doesn’t it? It can’t physically hurt me. I mean, unless my computer falls on me or I get a paper cut or something, but that’s pretty, pretty trivial. For whatever reason, when I sit down to write, I’m terrified. Terrified of failing, terrified of not being good enough, terrified of creating something that frightens me, afraid of what people will expect of us.

We have so many fears when we sit down to write, and I think that it’s healthy and good to acknowledge these fears and to recognize them for what they are. And to admit that it’s okay to have fear and even more importantly, that it’s okay to fail. And in fact, the only way that we’re going to get anywhere when we’re writing, is by making a commitment to fail a lot. But in the midst of all that fear, our instincts tend to take over. Remember learning in like, I don’t know, seven or eighth grade about, fight or flight when your adrenaline kicks in and you either stand your ground or run away. Well, I know myself very well and I’m not proud to admit this, but I often will run away. And that’s what I’ve been doing for the past two or three years, running away instead of standing my ground and fighting my own fears.

And I hope this isn’t the case for you, but if it is, I am right there with you. I am right there next to you terrified, but we’re in this together, and we’re writers darn it. We can do this. We’re smart. I have to tell you, actually, you know this is my first podcast. And I’ve been sitting here all day thinking about what I’m going to say. And I have this little outline of the five things I wanted to talk about. And then my microphone all set up, my computer running. And I just sat here for the longest time staring at the microphone. I probably shouldn’t even be admitting this to you, but I am. I was just staring at this little red light above my microphone. And I was so afraid. You can laugh at me. I’m okay with that. So I said, I’m going to go get a cup of coffee. So I got in my car and I drove to a coffee shop. And on my way, I called my sister, Rebecca.

Rebecca is also a writer, and she and I will talk sometimes about our various struggles. And she’s younger than I am, but seems years ahead of me in the insight department. And so I often call her when I’m stuck or afraid. So I called her and I said, “Rebecca, guess what I’m not doing right now? Podcasting.” She said, “Why not?” Then I said, “Because I’m afraid.” And then I realized exactly what I was doing. It’s the same thing I did when I was writing. And Rebecca recognized it too. She said, “You’re running away. Aren’t you?” And I was like, yeah, just getting some coffee, but secretly, yes, I’m running away. So she told me she believed in me. She told me she was excited to hear my podcast. And so here I am, back at my desk with my cup of coffee, podcasting, facing my fears. Don’t worry. You’re not one of my fears. It’s this little red light on top of the microphone that’s scary in its own little way. But this fear doesn’t do us any good unless we learn to fight it, instead of running away from it.

One of my all time favorite quotes from one of my all time favorite books, I don’t know if you’ve read Dune by Frank Herbert. The passage says, “I must not fear. Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

Great words from a great writer who probably understood all too well how fear can interfere with writing.

All right, number four. I’ve touched on this one a little bit already, but I want to go into more depth here. I want to talk about work, life and passion balance. The center of this podcast is going to be an ongoing discussion of work, life and passion balance.

And as a person with a full time job and a family, finding a good and healthy work life balance can be extremely difficult. I like to be involved in things, my community, my church. I like to do things that matter. I have a ton of hobbies. I just, I love to learn new things all the time and I love to be involved and I love to meet people. I also like to take care of my family. I like to help cook healthy meals. I like to be there when events happen. I like to make time for my spouse, but often those two worlds conflict. As I’ve said, I’m extremely dedicated to my job. And if I don’t keep an eye on the clock, I’ll end up staying late or I’ll go in super early because there’s some things I want to get done. And then I belong to a thousand different committees and social groups. And I don’t always have time to have dinner with my husband. And that’s a problem.

So it’s hard enough getting work and life to mesh together evenly. But when you add in a third element, when you add in a passion project, when you add in writing, that’s when things get a little out of control. I know these are only three things, but I think of it as a one of those four cornered sheets. You know what I’m talking about? The fitted sheets and you get down three corners and the fourth one’s always popping up. This is a three cornered sheet, and sometimes you can manage to get two and the third just, Hmm, it doesn’t want to cooperate. So sometimes I’ll make a meeting on time and I’ll have put in an eight hour workday, but then I don’t have dinner with my husband. Or I don’t have time to write when I’m at home. I get home at 10:00 PM and I’m an old lady so I go to bed. I’m sure you have the same struggle. We’ll be talking a lot more about the work, life, passion balance. But I just wanted to raise this as a very important issue that we’ll be dealing with more.

Finally, number five. Circumstances outside of our control. This is really important. And I wanted to spend some time talking about this one, especially because out of all of the other factors that I’ve mentioned, I think that this one is closest to a reason and furthest from an excuse. Circumstances outside of our control can be illness. If you are ill or debilitated or unable to get out of bed, if you’re hospitalized frequently, if you’re on medications, it can be very, very, very difficult to write. We have family situations. If you have kids at home, they present a very special challenge if you are trying to write. Constant distraction, if you are easily distracted, if you don’t have a safe haven in which to write and work, that can be a problem.

If you struggle with depression, for me this is where it really hits home. I struggled for years and years with depression. Of thinking, why bother? Feeling so full of despair that I have trouble getting out of bed, let alone staying up late to put in the time to lift up a pencil, or stare at a computer screen and type words that I don’t feel like typing. I know what it’s like, and it sucks. And so I definitely recognize that as a legitimate reason why you might be struggling with writing. And again, as with the others, we’ll talk more about this in a future session. So I wrote down the five things that were keeping me from writing. The fact that I was using up all of my creative energy at work. The disheartenment I felt when I was reading such awesome literature and realized that I wasn’t as good as I had wanted to be. I struggled with fear. I struggled to find a work, life, passion, project balance. And I was wrestling with circumstances outside of my control.

All of these contributed in their own way to my three years of no writing. But in those three years of no writing, I had plenty of time to think about writing, about not writing, about what I should be doing with my time. And I had a couple of realizations. The first thing I realized, was that you still need to give yourself permission to call yourself a writer even if you’re not writing. I lost a lot of the meaning in my life and myself when I stopped writing. And when I stopped writing, I stopped telling people I was a writer. And for a long time I felt lost. I felt abandoned, but I wasn’t sure what I had been abandoned by since it felt like a conscious decision on my part somehow. But then I talked to a very wise friend, her name is Carissa. And she shared with me the idea of thinking about life in seasons.

I was having coffee with Carissa and complaining that, ah, I can’t write and everything’s terrible. And she just looked at me and she says, “Maybe this isn’t the right season, Sarah.” And I remember feeling really astonished, because I had been thinking about my life as one long linear line, is that redundant, linear line. But I’d been thinking about myself rolling down a hill like a snowball, and gathering speed and gathering junk meaninglessness, wasting time, wasting this chunk of time I had to write. And the words, those simple words that she said really changed my view. Because seasons have a beginning and an end and they’re a couple months, maybe in my case a couple of years, but they do end. And you don’t have to spend all of your time playing catch up because you can simply begin a new season. Having different seasons means you can take the time that you need to deal with those circumstances beyond your control.

It means that you can maybe get away from some of those committees that you’re stuck on. Maybe take leave of absence where you need to. Maybe even take a small season, a weekend, to set aside and do some brainstorming. And then give yourself permission to begin a new season, a writing season. And it may have a beginning and it may have an end, but you need to give yourself permission to use that season, to fulfill who you really are and to write. My goal with this podcast is to help you make sure that you don’t lose that part of yourself. It’s very important that you call yourself a writer. It’s very important that you remember that you are a writer. And it’s crucial that you give yourself permission to take a season off, where it’s okay that you don’t write, where it’s okay that you deal with what you need to deal with. And then when you start your writing season, know that it is possible. Know that we’re going to find a work, life, writing balance that works. Hopefully, that’s my goal.

Doris Lessing has this wonderful, wonderful quote that I want to share with you. And she says, “Whatever you’re meant to do, do it now. The conditions are always impossible. Whatever you’re meant to do, do it now. The conditions are always impossible.” And I love that because it’s true. I’m not a lady of leisure. I need to work an eight hour job every day. I can’t just sit around in my country estates making bond bonds and writing a novel. It’s just a luxury that I don’t have and I’m fairly sure that you don’t have. I don’t have the luxury of writing two or 3,000 words every day, but I can find the time to write 500 or 300 or 50. The conditions will always be impossible. But we all need to give ourselves a season during which we can indulge ourselves in writing, in which we can give ourselves time and permission and overcome the fear.

Well, that got kind of heavy. I didn’t really mean it to. I was like, Oh, I’m going to have a podcast. And it’s going to be funny, LOL. And then I’m like, blah, depression. So I’m sorry about that. I do have a sense of humor and I promise that I will use it in future episodes, hopefully for your amusement. But I also wanted to establish a good starting point of where I was coming from because I want to go on this journey with you. And I’m assuming that if you’re listening to a podcast about finding a healthy work, life balance, that you don’t necessarily have that all figured out for yourself yet. And so, join me. Let’s do this side by side, is that corny? I don’t care. Sometimes it’s okay to be corny. My point is, is that we’re in this together.

Also, as this is my first podcast, I’d like to give you a little bit of a taste of what each episode will bring. Each podcast will likely have three sections. The first one will be about a topic such as, work, life, passion balance, or how to craft intelligent dialogue, or any other number of things. I’ll also be doing a book of the week, in which since I believe it’s so essential that writers read every day, I will be reading a book a week and sharing that with you. High points, low points, technical awesomeness, technical blunders, what to do, what not to do, that kind of thing. And as I said, I do read a wide variety. So, one week you might get a poetry chat book. One week you might get a Star Wars novel. I’ll try not to do too many Star Wars novels. And then the third section will be Q&A.

And so, I would absolutely love to put out the call, if you want to visit my website, which is sarahwerner.com. You can submit whatever question you like, and I will answer it. It can be about writing. It can be about work, life balance. It can be about my favorite animal, I don’t really care. And in fact, I do have a question here from Rebecca, from Cleveland, Ohio. Rebecca asks, “If you haven’t written in a while and find yourself out of the habit, how do you begin again?” And I think that’s a really excellent question and actually very fitting for this first podcast. The answer is to ease yourself back in, but without being too easy on yourself. So what I would absolutely love to see you do, is commit for the next couple of days, maybe over your lunch break, maybe between dinner and a meeting, whenever you have at least an hour chunk of time, commit to sitting down and writing at least 100 words.

It doesn’t sound like a whole lot, but what you’re doing right now is building a habit. Because habits are harder to break than sporadic weekend warrior writing moments. Force yourself to write every day even if it’s just 100 words, even if it’s just 50 words, even if you’re writing a haiku. Haikus are cool, they’re creative, maybe write one haiku a day. But whatever it is, set a low attainable goal and stick to it and then increase your goal from there. All right. And that brings me to the end of my very first podcast. You can find show notes at sarahwerner.com. underneath the Write Now podcast. Thank you so much for listening. I hope that it resonated with you, and I hope that you keep listening. I’d like to give special, thanks to a couple people. First, my sister, Rebecca, for providing me with encouragement and strength. I’d like to thank my husband, Tim, who supported me and got out of the house all day so that I could do this podcast.

I’d like to thank Peder Aadahl, one of my wonderful coworkers and the host of 168 Opportunities. He’s the one who, well, probably about a year and a half ago said, “Well, hey Sarah, why don’t you try podcasting?” I’d also like to thank two people who will probably never hear me thank them. And that is, Cliff Ravenscraft from podcast answerman.com and Daniel J. Lewis from theaudacitytopodcast.com. Both of these gentlemen have excellent free resources on their websites. And if you are interested at all in learning how to podcast, they will guide you.

Finally, again, I’d like to thank you for listening. If you want, you can head over to my website and sign up for my email newsletter, and periodically I will send you fun emails, hooray!

And until next time, thank you for listening to 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.

[Closing song.]