You should give up writing NOW...
Ever felt like C.C.Baxter? Recognise that look of mild despair?
You know, when the keyboard stares back at you in that challenging fashion it has, daring you to try - again! - to press its keys in a sequence sufficiently inspired in order to create something wonderful? Or when you acknowledge that you’re just one of far too many people all striving for the same thing?
One in a million? Pebble on a beach?
Let’s face it, there are lots of reasons why you should give up writing - and now.
It’s hard and lonely work - and you could have much more fun doing something else.
You’ll never be as good as you want to be - nor as good as you already think you are!
Finding something new to write about is impossible: “there are no new ideas”.
Finding a fresh style or voice in which to write about those ‘new’ things is also impossible; every time you try, all you produce is cliché, a mash-up of something or someone that’s gone before.
And even if you do manage to produce a book, you’ll never get an agent / a publisher / a pitch on one of the main tables at Waterstones or Barnes & Noble.
Even if you did that, you wouldn’t make any real money.
What makes it worse is that there are far too many people all keen to tell you how to be a success and achieve those things - to sell you their ‘secrets’ - such that a) you’re disheartened by the sense that they have ’made it’, and b) you’re so swamped by the general noise that you’re not sure you believe them anyway.
You never thought it would be possible to make a connection between writing and politicians, did you?
So. Are you going to throw in the towel?
Or are you gong to pop the top from those jars of words one more time and take another run at it?
We both know the answer!
And why is that? Why should you keep going even though the odds are stacked against you? Well, it’s driven by why you’re doing it…
Hard and lonely? Yes, okay - but there’s nothing like that feeling when you write something you like or, more importantly, when someone else tells you they like it.
Not good enough? Perhaps. But the more you practice, the better you get. And anyway, if you wrote the perfect poem or story today, can you imagine how dreadful you’d feel tomorrow when your next piece wasn’t as good? That all your subsequent pieces weren’t as good?
No new subjects? Come on! Has there ever been? Really? Love, hate, war, families, politics, religion, fantasy, history - you name it, people have been writing about the same core things for centuries. Even Shakespeare and Chaucer got their plot lines from other people!
You have no voice, no style? Maybe not - or not yet. But maybe you do, and you don’t realise it. All you can do is to write what you want to write in the way it feels appropriate to do so. Never consciously imitate; you’ll only produce cheap pastiche.
No public recognition? Again, maybe not. But you have to ask yourself why you want it - indeed, why you’re writing in the first place. And how are you choosing to measure ‘recognition’ in any case? If you want to be famous / have millions of followers there are more effective ways to achieve that goal than writing.
And money? Seriously? If that’s what you’re after then you really are in the wrong game!
But more often than not we pop the lid on the word-jars, apply our fingers to the keyboard, because we can’t help it. And we’re not interested in ‘cold turkey’.
There is no nicotine patch for writing, no heroine substitute; you can’t go to rehab or see a shrink. And neither should you - not only because you can’t, but because you don’t really want to.
So, suck it up. Writing is the tyrant to which we are chained; the substance to which we’re addicted.
And we wouldn’t have it any other way…