The Habit that Destroys My Writing
I have a terrible habit as a writer. It’s awful, and at times I simply cannot escape it. When I take this behavior on a bender it destroys my creativity, eliminates my productivity, and produces a remarkable amount of self-loathing. This habit is easily the worst thing for my writing. And yet, I deceive myself into believing that it will actually help!
So, what is this awful habit? I routinely—like, almost every day—convince myself that I have to live up to the title, “writer”. I think that I have to be like Ernest Hemingway:
Or James Joyce:
Or Sylvia Plath:
To put it simply, my worst habit as a writer is romanticizing the identity of “writer.”
This temptation to romanticize artists makes sense. The cloud of mythology has always surrounded artists. Culture makers possess real power, and we know it. Yet they tend to live on the edges of the cultures they help build. The greatest contributions are often acknowledged only after the passage of time. Writers, artists, and other creatives often stand on the margins of society.
Painter and writer Makoto Fujimura calls artists “border-stalkers” for this reason. He writes that from these borders they help others see what lies outside. And they can lead those outside to see what’s within. An artist’s natural place is not really on the inside, but rather the margins. And anything that lives on the margins is often misunderstood and either mistreated or romanticized. There are a lot of implications that stem from this insight, which is why Fujimura wrote a whole book about it
Of course as much as any artist creates culture, we’re also influenced by it as well. We set our own expectations of who we should be, and how we should create, and what makes or breaks us as a “real artist.” We look to our heroes as the standard and then we judge ourselves by it. So, many days I find myself sitting down to write, convinced that I am not enough of a writer to write anything good. And of course at that point the battle is lost before it even began.
I don’t know if every artist has this struggle. I know a lot who do, and I know others that seem to never doubt who they are or their ability to create. But truthfully I suspect that I just don’t know those people well enough to see their struggles. I honestly think we all fight this battle to some degree.
Each morning I sit down to write, I compare myself with the mythical, perfected vision of myself as a writer. It’s a recipe for creative disaster, or more likely a reason that dissuades fee from sitting down in the first place. If this is the bad habit, if this is the thing that kills my writing, how can I—or anyone else—fight it? How can any of us work to overcome this dreaded comparison?
First, we must debunk the myth of the artist for ourselves. The romanticism that we often find so appealing—because we’d love for other people to see us in these mythic terms, or think of ourselves this way—is the same thing that leads us to believe we must be or create a certain way. Reading the biographies of artists we admire will help demythologize them. A book like Daily Rituals: How Artists Work can help you understand how many other artists approach their work each day. It can help us to stop comparing our backstage work to other artist’s work in the spotlight. It’s invaluable to read about how other people approach the same kind of work—and this book definitely strips some of the romance from our creative heroes. The lesson it teaches is simple: the artists that reach their goals are the ones that simply sit down and do the work. It’s the same lesson I’ve learned the hard way.
Second, we must learn to show ourselves grace. None of us are perfect, and none of us can be perfect. Of course that’s easy to say, and even easier to agree to, but I’ve found it’s peculiarly hard to actually believe in a deep-down, know-it-in-your-bones, change-your-life, sort of way. There will be off days. We will write terrible sentences. We will have ideas that we love in our heads and hate on paper. That’s okay. It’s part of the process. We do not have to be perfect writers—ever. Particularly not when we sit down with a first, second, or tenth draft. Perfection is not the goal. Creating something full of goodness, beauty, and truth is.
I’ve been working towards being a professional writer for over 20 years. From writing articles for my college newspaper to writing novels and stage plays while working in tech, I’ve always wanted to be paid to write. And for the last five years, that’s been the case. Not only do I have the privilege of writing and telling stories for a living, half of my job is leading, coaching, and shepherding writers and other artists. In many ways it’s a dream job. But still, most of my creative ambitions lie on the floor, half completed.
I stubbornly attach a romanticism to the identity of “writer” that locks me up. I have to write in a certain way, at a certain time, when the conditions are right and it has to be polished enough to have come from a professional. It’s a massive weight to bear. It’s too much, in fact. For years now I have extolled the virtues of hard work, and the preached about the need to sit down and write. And quite frequently I manage to pull that off. Yet I often talk myself out of it, too. It’s the same idea that the Apostle Paul teaches, we don’t do the good deeds we want to, but instead keep doing the bad things we don’t want to. As a Christian artist, this is a very familiar battle for me. But maybe this is not be your particular creative struggle. If it is, I hope this little sliver of my experience helps. Or maybe it helps you identify your own worst mental habit.
In the end, I am a writer, whether I live up to that image in my head, or not. I have a gift for words that should be used for good, even if I don’t have the powerful concision of Hemingway, the creative vision of Joyce, or Sylvia Plath’s bite.
On the days when I focus on the writing instead of being a writer, I remember that I do love the work. I really do love to shape words, ideas, and stories. And I don’t have to live up to anyone else’s idea of a writer, not even my own. I instead, I just have to sit down and write.