This is the Write Now podcast with Sarah Werner. Episode 112, Writer’s Guilt.

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 Sarah Werner and I’ve got kind of another heavy topic for this week. 

In our last episode, we talked about survival mode. And in today’s episode, we’re talking about guilt. I know these can be kind of heavy topics to talk about, but I also think that they need to be talked about. And so don’t worry in the future/ very near future we will get back to talking about more light-hearted topics. But guilt is something that I deal with a lot and I’ve talked with a lot of other writers and it seems like they deal with guilt on a constant basis as well. So let’s talk about it. It turns out that writer’s guilt can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people.

Many writers feel guilty for not writing enough. Other writers feel guilty for writing too much when they “should be doing other things.” Other writers feel guilty because they’ve been told that writing is selfish or a waste of time. Many writers feel guilty for enjoying writing. And to put a cherry on top, many writers feel guilty about feeling guilty. I don’t know if you identify with any of these or perhaps all of these. I know that at some point in my life, I have identified with every single one of these. I don’t know if that’s because I was raised in the Midwest where guilt is essentially part of life and part of corrective behavior in children. But I want to talk a little bit today about why we feel this guilt and more importantly, what we can do about it because more often than not, guilt makes us feel bad.

Even if we’re doing something that we’re enjoying, like writing, guilt comes in and says, Oh, you don’t get to enjoy this. You need to feel terrible about it. Or if we take a break from writing and we’re trying to enjoy our time off, guilt comes in and says, Oh, you don’t get to deserve time off. You should feel crappy about not writing. I did a very tiny bit of Googling about writer’s guilt before I started recording this episode just because I wanted to make sure I wasn’t saying anything that had been talked about to death. And I came across some really fantastic articles about writer’s guilt. One of them was from Colleen Story at @writingandwellness.com. And she talks about guilt being an implication that we have done something wrong. Guilt can be useful if we need to take action to remedy something, to right a wrong, if we need to apologize.

But she makes this wonderful point in her article that writing is not wrong and resting is not wrong. These are not the sort of things that we need to apologize for. And we’ll talk a little bit more about why that is in just a bit. I also came across a very lovely blog post by author Victoria Gruffer and I hope I’m saying that name correctly. But this article is from 2013 and in it, the author provides us a definition for writer’s guilt that I thought was really, really good. And so Victoria says, “Writers guilt is feeling that you are selfish, idealistic and irresponsible for writing when you could be doing something more profitable and practical with your time.” And I’ll make sure to link to both of these blog posts in the show notes for today’s episode, episode 112.

There’s the thing that we are “doing, wrong.” The thing that we should feel guilty for. And again, that is being quote, “selfish, idealistic and irresponsible. When you could be doing something more profitable and practical with your time.” So the question becomes, is writing bad? Is writing something we should feel guilty for doing? Is writing wrong? Is writing in fact selfish? Is writing idealistic? Is it irresponsible? Is it unprofitable? And is it a waste of time? Well, we’re not going to talk about profitability, but we are going to talk about those other things. So here’s a question. Have you ever expressed to somebody else, to anybody else that you want to be a writer and that it’s your dream to become a writer? And then have you ever had the person to whom you told that respond, “You should probably get a real job.”

And this is where things start to break down and get really weird because then the question becomes, “What do you mean by a real job?” Are you talking about one where I sit in a cubicle all day and then at the end of the month somebody hands me a paycheck, someone who isn’t me? So is that a real job? But what if I wanted to start my own business? Say, what if I wanted to start a bakery? Is running my own business, is that a real job? Can I give myself the money? Okay so that’s a real job, somebody who owns a bakery. I don’t know, maybe this rhetorical person that we’re talking about has a very narrow definition of real job and it’s only sitting at a cubicle and having someone else give you a paycheck.

But on the off chance, it’s not. What’s the difference between me earning money with my writing and the person earning money with their bakery? Ah, you say, but here’s the thing, Sarah. Remember earlier when you said we’re not talking about writing being profitable? Most writers don’t make any money writing. And I have several issues with that. First and foremost, there is absolutely nothing morally wrong with doing something purely because you enjoy doing it. And in this case, whether you consider it a hobby or a career that simply hasn’t paid out yet, it’s still an extremely good and legitimate activity to do. However, I maintain that there’s still people who, despite the writing bringing in money, they would claim that writing is still not a real job. I make money writing. And there are people out there who say that I don’t have a real job.

And I don’t know where the line is. Actually cynically, I want to say where the line is. Maybe it’s because I’m not sitting in a cubicle, maybe it’s because I’m not having somebody else hand me a paycheck , but I think that their problem, and I think that their definition of a real job comes from the fact that I’m not miserable. I’m doing something that I love and I’m making money from it. And it’s not a real job because I don’t hate my life, because I’m not suffering enough. And you know what, all those writers out there who aren’t getting paid, they should be getting paid. But that is a whole other topic. And actually, I’ve done an episode about whether or not writers should get paid. It’s episode 41, which I recorded back in 2016. And the title of the episode is, Should Writers Be Paid? And I encourage you to check that out.

Okay. We went on a little bit of a tangent there. We were talking about writer’s guilt, which according to author Victoria Gruffer is once again, this feeling that you are selfish, idealistic and irresponsible for writing when you could be doing something more profitable and practical with your time. And honestly, I think that slipping into a tangent about whether or not writing is a “real job” is illustrative of that concept because a real job “is not a waste of time.” Well, that’s maybe debatable depending on what your real job is, but I don’t want to go down another tangent so we’re going to stick to this.

A real job “is not selfish.” It’s not idealistic. It’s not irresponsible. The problem is that society does not value art. I think it is seen as impractical and idealistic and non-essential. But that’s really interesting too because have you seen how much money Netflix makes? Do you know how much Disney and Marvel are worth? If you ask someone, if you were stranded on a desert island, what is the one thing that you couldn’t live without? I mean obviously you’ll get the people, the kind of people who say, “Oh, I would have a converter that changes salt water into fresh drinking water so that I don’t dehydrate.” But then you’ll also have the people who say, “Oh my gosh, I would want this book.” Or, “I would want my favorite TV show,” or, “I would want this comic series.”

We value stories. Favorite books, favorite movies, even favorite podcasts are integral to who we are as people. So why would the people who create them be labeled as selfish, idealistic and irresponsible? Why are we told that we should be doing something more profitable and practical with our time? Why do we feel guilt for doing this type of work? I have a few thoughts. I think number one, it’s not seen as work. I think people have this idea that when a writer sits down to write or a cartoonist sits down to draw, or an artist sits down to paint, that what we’re doing is sitting down to a wonderland of adventure and maybe even getting paid for it. I know that earlier I said I love what I do. I did not say that what I do is not hard work.

If you’ve ever written anything in your entire life, a short story, a poem, an essay, maybe it was fun. Maybe it was at the tip of your brain and it just flowed out and it was amazing and everyone loved it forever. But maybe you’ve been struggling for six years to get through the middle of your steam punk novel. Maybe you’re frustrated that nobody is reading your poetry. Maybe you are on your ninth revision of the finale episode of your science fiction podcast. And maybe you’re like me, maybe you’re in a place where the thing that you’re working on right now is really hard but you feel like you can’t complain about it because the first iteration of the thing you’re creating was met with great success and it was fun to create. And you feel like if you complain about how hard it is, it’s like the ultimate first world problem. Because you’re not stuck in a coal mine. You’re not on a factory assembly line. You’re not at some kind of real job where you trade suffering for dollars.

This might be going down another tangent, but hey, what is life without tangents right? I know growing up, all I ever wanted to do was write and read. We weren’t allowed to watch TV and so my options were kind of limited. And when my parents would come across me reading or writing when there was work to be done around the house, it was obviously what I was doing was a waste of time. Writing and reading were my rewards for pulling weeds in the garden, for doing the dishes, for getting my homework done. Do your homework then you can go write. Clean your room and then you can read. Fold your laundry and then you can take out your notebooks and start writing again.

And I don’t know if you grew up in a similar situation, but there was a very distinct line between work and play. Where work was worthwhile and play was worthless. Where work was misery and suffering and play was a release from that misery or suffering, it was a relief. And there was even a little bit of a trade-off there. Do this thing that you don’t want to do and then by doing that, you can earn the time and the privilege of doing the thing that you do want to do. And again, maybe this is just I’m projecting my own personal issues here, but maybe it’s true for some of you as well. But it kind of boiled down to, you have to earn your joy with suffering. If you want to work on your novel, you have to do these six pages of algebra two questions.

And I promise this all comes back to guilt because I was trained to see creative writing as play. Something that I had to earn by doing chores and homework and other things I did not want to do. So now, as an adult, I feel guilty that I’m indulging in writing without having suffered for it first. Without having earned it. And I think this is why it shapes so much when people say that writing is not a real job because it confirms this thing that I learned in childhood that writing is play, writing is a reward for when your real work is done. And here’s where things get really convoluted. I find myself four years out of the quote, “real workforce,” self-employed, writing full-time. I find myself deprioritizing my writing. I find myself looking for administrative tasks to do so that I can get the hard stuff out of the way, the stuff that I don’t want to do so that I can earn my writing later.

But the real messed up thing is that my creative writing is what makes us the most money. So I feel guilty for writing, but I also feel guilty for not writing when I do spend days doing those administrative tasks because I’m not earning us as much money. And then I feel guilty about feeling guilty and then the cycle flushes itself down the toilet. So, do you feel guilty for writing? Do you feel guilty for not writing? Do you feel guilty for feeling guilty about either or both of those things? Where are you in this cycle? I was talking with a good friend earlier this week who just had surgery and she was understandably feeling really awful. And she’s like, “Oh, I just can’t write today and I feel so guilty about it.” And I said, “Oh my gosh, I totally understand what you mean. I was sick earlier this week, I had a sinus infection and it just completely knocked me out. And I feel also guilty about losing those two days of work.”

And the thing about guilt is it compounds or it feels like it compounds. And maybe this is another aspect to the avalanche that we’re out running which I talked about back in episode 108. The guilt never goes away, or it doesn’t go away until either we absolve it or it is absolved for us. I told my friend, “Don’t feel guilty for not writing, you had surgery. Oh my gosh, that is such a good reason not to write.” And she said, “Oh, Sarah, don’t feel guilty about not writing because you were sick. That is such a legitimate reason not to write.” And after we stopped chatting, I think we both still felt guilty.

But again, I want to go back to Colleen Story’s wonderful point that guilt means that we’ve done something wrong. Having surgery and being knocked out because of that surgery, that is not wrong. Getting sick, it’s not wrong. Taking time to rest is not wrong. We need to stop feeling guilty about these things. And I think that’s only going to come from within us. That’s only going to come from a mindset change. That’s only going to come from us giving ourselves grace, remembering that we are human, remembering that we are weird meat puppets, dancing to the tune of an unknown and understandable universe.

Yes, I just coined the term ununderstandable So you’re welcome for that. I want to say this really clearly and not make up words like ununderstandable. Writing is not wrong. Storytelling Is a part of who we are as individuals, as a culture. Writing is so important to our growth as a society and to our growth as individuals. People who create live longer, healthier, happier lives. I gave a talk on creativity several years ago and was just astounded by all of the research that’s been done about how important it is for even people who are aging to still continue doing creative things like crafting and listening to music. But we’re taught to feel guilty about “indulging in these things” because they’re “not worth our time” because we should be doing something better or more important.

I can tell you this, I’ve suffered from anxiety and depression my entire life and if I’m not actively working on a project, if I am not actively writing or creating something, I go to a very dark and unhealthy place. The third episode of the Write Now podcast recorded way back in 2015 is about writing as self care. Back in 2015, self care was a term I had never heard before. And I know it’s blown up and it’s become really big right now. But years ago, I’d never heard that phrase before. I didn’t know what it meant. And I latched onto it because I realized this is a thing that helps me live, this is something that I need. This isn’t worthless. This isn’t a waste of time. This is me. Not to get melodramatic, but this is me fighting for my life.

As someone who now creates full time as a very real job, that line between work and play, between worth and worthless has dissolved. But the guilt hasn’t. The guilt remains. And I want to get rid of it. And if you are feeling guilty about writing or not writing or about feeling guilty about writing or not writing, I don’t want you to feel guilty anymore. I want to hone in on another word in Victoria’s definition of writer’s guilt. And then it’s the word selfish because I hear that word a lot from other writers. Like, Oh, when I write, I feel selfish because I should be helping my son with his homework. Or I should be washing the dishes. Or I should be cleaning the floors. Or I should be dot dot dot.

And yes, if your child is waiting for you in the pouring rain at school and you’re at home writing and you’ve completely forgotten to pick up your child, maybe there is an issue there. And maybe you can feel a little bit guilty about leaving your six-year-old in the rain. But that’s an extreme example. Most of the time when we write, instead of doing the dishes, it’s not a choice between good and evil. It’s not a choice between moral and immoral. It’s simply a choice about how we are spending our time and what feels fulfilling to us. What value does doing the dishes bring to your life and what value does writing bring to your life? This is not something I can answer for you. This is a question of your priorities and the choices that you want to make. And at some point, it’s probably a good idea to do the dishes.

But if you continue to do the dishes instead of writing, you’re going to set yourself up to feel another type of guilt and that is regret. Years and years down the road when you wish that years and years ago you had devoted more time to writing your memoir or writing those poems. A couple of months ago, I sent an email out to my newsletter lists. So hey, quick side tangent, if you want to sign up for my newsletters, they come out every Monday. They’re always on a topic that’s related to creativity and writing in life. And this particular one was called Breaking Selfish. If you want to sign up to receive these newsletters, just go out to SarahWerner.com. That’s S-A-R-A-H W-E-R-N-E-R.com and sign up for my Dear Creators Newsletters.

Okay, tangent over. So a couple months ago, I sent out this email to my newsletter list and it was called Breaking Selfish. And I talked about how we think about being selfish and what it really means to be selfish. And I thought about being labeled as selfish is generally considered kind of bad in our society. And being labeled as selfless is considered good. And so I came to this conclusion that the problem was with the self. If we were self-serving, we were bad. And if we were selfless, if we were giving, if we were nurturing and if we put others first, we were good. And in my mind, being selfless meant an actual lessening of the self, or perhaps having no self at all.

But when you get to the point where you are fully diminishing or discounting or erasing the self, I think that that becomes a problem because we begin to dip into martyrdom. Now you may know this is a, it’s a thing that I talk about a lot. Maybe not on this podcast, but if you go out to my website and you listen to the TEDx talk that I gave in 2019, it’s all about this concept of harmful martyrdom and how a little bit of selfishness is actually not a bad thing. I know there’s this new mantra that self-care isn’t selfish, but I really at its core, I would love to remove the stigma from the word selfish because I think it’s okay for us to do things for ourselves. And I don’t want everyone to completely be a sociopath and stop caring about others and stop giving and helping and nurturing each other, but I think that there comes a point when we are giving too much of ourselves.

I know a lot of writers, a lot of writers hesitate to work on their passion projects. Their novels, their poetry books, their memoirs, because doing so feels selfish. Like we should be doing something I don’t know, better, more meaningful, question mark with our time. But working on your craft, is it selfish and is selfish bad? When we do this, are we taking something away from someone else? Perhaps time, perhaps energy, but to what degree are we allowed to keep anything or do anything for ourselves? And who does the allowing? Is our purpose to completely strip mine our time and our energy completely in the service of others? Or is our purpose to use our creative gifts and talents to help others, to tell stories, to provide entertainment, information and joy?

We feel guilty for being selfish because we’re told that selfish is wrong; that selfish is bad and that we shouldn’t be taking time to nurture our own creative spirit. That time and energy should be spent on everyone else, not us. Have you ever thought that your writing is selfish? Have you ever been told that your writing is selfish? Have you ever felt simultaneously guilty for not writing every day and for not putting your family first? I think that when it comes down to it, writer’s guilt is about us devaluing two things. We are devaluing our writing by saying that it’s not real work, that it’s not a real job, that it’s an indulgence, that it’s silly, that it’s not worth it. That it’s a waste of time. And we’re devaluing ourselves by forgetting that this is something we need. By refusing to nurture our own creative spirit. By refusing to take care of ourselves in this way.

Now the answer here is not more guilt. If you find that you are devaluing writing, or if you are giving into other people devaluing your writing, or if you are devaluing yourself or giving into other people devaluing yourself, the answer is not to feel guilty about it because guilt compounds and it drives us into a really bad place. If you murder someone, if you rob a bank, yes, you should feel guilty. If you write and you take joy in your writing, you’re not doing anything wrong, you do not need to feel guilty. Now getting rid of a guilt response or a guilt complex, especially if you were raised within one can be really difficult. But I think we can begin by valuing our writing and by valuing ourselves. Realizing that writing is good for us.

There is a reason we feel compelled to write and create. It brings us meaning, it brings us fulfillment, it brings us joy. It refreshes us and it allows us to use our skills and our talents to their fullest ability. Realize that when you write, you are making a choice to do something that is fulfilling and fun and good for you. You’re not choosing to slack. You’re not making a morally bad choice. You’re doing something important. And other people need to understand that it’s important to you. I don’t have a magic wand that can wave away the guilt just like I don’t have a magic wand that can suddenly restore your self-worth or your belief in your writing. But I want you to know that if you feel that guilt and if you struggle with feeling the self-worth, I understand and there are so many of us who understand and are right there with you. You have one life to live and I want you to live it doing what you love, what you were made to do.

As always, I would love to hear your thoughts on the topic of writer’s guilt, whether you struggle with it, whether you don’t, if you overcame it somehow, if you’re still struggling with it, I would love to hear about your thoughts and your experience. I’m not always able to respond to every single email and ping on social media that I get, but if you leave a comment on the show notes for today’s episode, episode number 112, I personally read and respond to every single one of those comments out on my website. So I encourage you to go to SarahWerner.com. That’s S-A-R-A-H W-E-R-N-E-R.com and navigate to the show notes for today’s episode, episode number 112. And if you scroll to the bottom of that post, you’ll see a place where you can leave comments and I am really excited to read those. So yeah, I’m really interested to hear your thoughts and your perspective on this subject.

Also, as always, all episodes of the Write Now podcast are made possible by the amazing people who support me out on Patreon. Patreon is a secure third party donation platform that lets people like you donate a dollar per episode, $2 per episode, or whatever you feel the show is worth to you. You can do this out on patreon.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 you can navigate to the show notes for today’s episode out @sarahwerner.com and click on the link that says help support this podcast. That will take you out to Patreon where you can sign up and make your pledge.

So special thanks for today’s episode go out to Amanda L. Dixon, Laurie, Leslie Madsen, Regina Calabrese, Sean Locke, E.V. Knight, Garrett, Leslie Duncan, Tiffany Joyner and Sarah Lauzon. Thank you all so much for your generosity. You help make this podcast possible and I am extremely grateful to you for it. Again, if you would like to join their ranks, you can do so out @sarahwerner.com in the show notes for today’s episode, episode number 112. 

And with that, this has been episode 112 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 am going to attempt to write this evening without guilt.