Do you have a vice?
And if not, don't you think you should?
Or — and this is more likely — you do have a vice but refrain from labelling it as such, preferring to couch it in ‘softer’ words, less problematic ones. It’s a ‘habit’, a ‘characteristic’, a ‘foible’, a ‘thing “I’ve always done like that”…’
I’m talking about writing vices. Obviously.
Indeed, you may have more than one — there are plenty to go around!
But what do I mean by ‘vice’? According to one dictionary there are options:
immoral or wicked behaviour;
as a substitute;
a tool to hold something in place;
next in rank to (i.e. one step down on the pecking order).
What’s the problem with admitting to the odd vice? That might be your opening stance. Having a vice proves you’re human, doesn’t it? In terms of you as writer, your vices could be either positive or negative; they might spur you on to greater things — or stop you making any forward progress at all.
And the most dangerous vice of all is the one which remains unacknowledged…
I suspect that most often vices are hiding pretty much in plain sight; we know they’re there, but resolutely refuse to admit to them or call them out. In some cases these vices can be akin to the symptom of a disease you have chosen not to recognise — though not recognising it also means you won’t do anything to find a remedy for it.
And the other common trait of writerly vices is that they are often self-adopted, chosen, the result of having come to some kind of writing-related decision, a contract with yourself. Let’s briefly look at three common ones.
Editing
You edit too little or too much. The result is that your work is never as good as you could possibly make it — or your production is incredibly slow / you never finish anything. This is a vice which is very visible. Maybe you kid yourself and make the vice acceptable by laughing it off: you tell yourself the next thing you write is going to be better so you have to move on and leave the current work knowingly unfinished; or you believe only perfection is good enough, hence edit number 13 or 26…. That next great idea is going to have to wait.
Neither end of the spectrum is good for you. There are ways to break free of them, to self-educate yourself into a better balance, but only if you recognise the vice first. Oh, and also understand that editing is writing.
Imposter Syndrome
Perhaps an even more common ailment. You’re just not very good — and you know it. Everyone else’s work is so much better than yours, and frankly you don’t really know why you bother…
Let’s be honest, in some cases this will be true. In the majority, far less so. Your work will have merit, quality, you just need to find a way to see it — and the best way to do that is to have someone else tell you that it’s okay. Validation. So sharing is vital — but also quite difficult if you suffer from IS.
This is a vice which can also be positive, however. Recognising your attachment to IS can spur you on to try and improve; you can use it as a driver rather than something which holds you back.
But there’s also a darker side: those people who believe their work is brilliant, for whom IS only affects other people; it is their illness. How can they themselves possibly suffer from it? Such arrogance is, I suggest, unhealthy; everyone can do with a little IS from time to time.
So, if you think your work is perfect, get over yourself; it isn’t, and never will be.
Process
Vice as ‘a tool to hold something in place’? Well what about process; a method or routine to which you adhere rigidly and which, by doing so, you convince yourself you qualify as a writer?
1,000 words a day? Word-smithing from 9-11 every day? Keeping a log? Always starting each writing session with a sonnet? etc. None of these are negative per se, and all can be useful in terms of building a framework within which to be creative. The danger arises when we carry on with them even after they’ve stopped being effective, when we know we’re just ‘going through the motions’, when ‘the process’ becomes as important as your writing — maybe more so. And maybe because certain processes work for other people, we think we need those same ones for ourselves.
Instinctively you should be able to feel when a process isn’t helping, when it has become a crutch. The depth, quality, volume of your output will be a guide. Trust your gut, it’s not often wrong.
And what about ‘Writer’s block’: surely that’s an affliction? Maybe. But it could also be a part of your ‘process’, another crutch on which you lean.
But wait. None of the above fall into the ‘immoral or wicked’ bucket. So are there no vices which we can label as such? Well, there’s a new kid on the block: Artificial Intelligence.
What AI actually is can be hard to pin down; to a certain extent it’s how you define it. Is a spellchecker AI? Or what about ‘Grammarly’ or ‘Scrivener’? Or even MS Word? For some people any and all tech can be tarred with the AI brush.
But at the other end?
At the most extreme point of the spectrum some people confess to using AI to create plots — and then use ChatGBT (or some such) to actually ‘write’ their first draft. Neither of these abdications are ‘writing’. Indeed, if that’s where your vice resides, then in my mind it totally disqualifies you as a writer; a writer is an individual responsible for the entire creative process beginning to end, from the generation of an initial idea all the way through to production of the final full-stop.
For any of the ‘vices’ above, recognition is the first step: to able to see them for what they are is the prerequisite for tackling them. It’s a bit like standing up at your first AA meeting: “Hello, my name’s Sam and I’m a writer…” Many of the other writers at your fictional ‘AA meeting’ will be in the same boat as you; some will be going through the Cold Turkey of giving up unending editing or abandoning a treasured process, and others will be coming out the other side.
The trick for you as a writer is to be honest about your vices and tackle them head-on, but not in an aggressive or confrontational way. Remember, in all cases (other than that of AI) there are benefits to be had from being modest about your work, editing thoroughly, sticking to a routine; you need to be striving for balance in all things, turning your vices into virtues.
At the outset I asked whether you should have a vice. A bit tongue-in-cheek as I suspect every writer has at least one in some form or another. But if you don’t? If your writing life is in perfect balance? Well, for firstly I don’t believe you; and secondly there might be some merit in trying to throw yourself off kilter for a while — a new process, more/less editing etc. — just to see… And having seen, then turn what you have discovered about yourself and your relationship to your work into another virtue!
Bit worried now. Does never thinking of myself as an actual writer let me off the hook?