The last few weeks writing has felt really hard. I’ve been maintaining large word counts, but it hasn’t been easy. It’s felt like work. I find myself fidgeting and my mind wandering, and the focus just isn’t as sharp as I’d like it to be.
So I set up a standing desk in front of my dresser, with books stacked to make the computer sit at a proper height, and when I feel my mind wandering, I do a little sway or I stretch my muscles or I just bounce a little on my toes, because movement gets the brain working much more efficiently than sitting sedentary for four hours a day.
But still, even though my makeshift standing desk has been helping me write faster, it hasn’t made the writing feel any easier. I thought maybe it was because I was coming up on a much-needed Sabbatical, but then I realized it’s more than that.
Right now I’m working on four fiction projects. I’m writing one of them in first-person point of view, but I’m writing the others in third-person point of view. I’ve never written in third-person before, so this is something that feels really hard to me as a writer. I don’t like doing things that feel hard, and that’s why my focus has been everywhere all at once.
Maybe I would get more words written if I switched those three projects to third-person point of view, and maybe I would be saving time with those projects, but I also wouldn’t be growing as a writer. It doesn’t serve me and my craft to only remain where I’m comfortable. If I only wrote in first-person point of view for the rest of my life, I wouldn’t be growing at all as a writer. I might be getting better at first-person, but I wouldn’t be a well rounded writer. And mostly I just want to be a well rounded writer.
So I forge on. Every week I write in that third-person point of view for each of those projects is another week I get better at it.
We don’t gain anything as writers by staying where we are comfortable, in that small little space of comfort where we feel we can be good. Maybe even the best. Sometimes we have to write something bad—really bad—to grow as a writer. Sure, I write mostly literary fiction, but I’m trying my hand at some young adult romance and a mystery romance thriller and some sci-fi and fantasy, because I’m not really sure which one I’d like to do best. I just know what comes easiest—literary fiction in first-person point of view.
Writing will always feel hard when we’re trying something new, whether it’s nonfiction or new fiction ventures. But what we can know when writing feels hard is that we are getting better, as long as we don’t give up. It’s like when our first-grade teacher asked us to do a description of a vase of flowers, and we said all the normal things that first time—the flowers are yellow and the vase is white and the water is clear. And then, as we grow and practice and continue to write, we begin to notice that the flowers aren’t just yellow, but they’re the color of our sister’s hair, and the vase isn’t just white, but it’s white with tiny veins cracking it, and the water isn’t so much clear as it is sparkly, because of those bubble breaths the stems take.
Description, when we were kids, felt hard. I know, because I have an 8-year-old who doesn’t always like doing these exercises when he’s in school, because it’s not all that fun to try to describe something when you can see it right in front of you and so can everybody else. But you keep at it because you want to get better. You want to turn a picture in your head into a picture in someone else’s head.
We keep on, because we want to improve as writers.
So when writing feels hard, here are some things you can do:
1. Remember that it won’t always feel this hard.
Things feel hard when we aren’t used to doing them. That’s okay. It doesn’t mean we’re bad writers. I let my hard time with writing third-person point of view make me feel like maybe I wasn’t quite as good as I thought, but it’s not true. If something feels hard it only means we’re learning and growing as writers. It won’t always feel this hard, because the more we practice, the better at it we will get. One of these days, it will feel so easy we’ll have to move on to something else.
2. Take a break from the project.
It doesn’t have to be a long break. Sometimes our projects just need a day or two to breathe. Sometimes it just needs a little space to develop. So put it aside for a couple of days or a week even. Whatever it takes to look on it with fresh eyes, because the truth about when writing feels hard is that we don’t really want to do what’s hard. We don’t get any better if we’re not constantly challenging ourselves with things we don’t really know how to do.
We can use the break to learn something new. I spend time outside of writing constantly seeking knowledge and information, like how to write mystery stories or how to craft a good romance or how to best write a long-form essay, because it serves my craft to always be learning. Short breaks can be good for getting us unstuck and making writing feel a little easier. But not too easy.
3. Maybe it’s time for a Sabbatical.
If you’ve never had a Sabbatical, maybe it’s time to try one. I can always feel when my Sabbatical week is coming up, because my exhaustion is overwhelming and my love for writing is not quite as thick as it used to be. Writing begins to feel really hard. I write an average of 40,000 words every week, and that can be grueling for a writer if there is no rest between. Taking just a week away where I’m not working on any of my projects or posting on any of my blogs is enough to help me start the following week with fresh perspective and renewed love and energy for what I am so privileged to do.
I take a Sabbatical every seventh week.
4. Stare fear in the face.
Many writers have a fear of trying something new. We’re not alone. But if we’re only letting that fear rule what kind of stories and essays we’re producing, those stories will start to sound canned. Formulaic. Unoriginal. We have to be willing to throw wrenches into our projects, and sometimes that means trying something new or introducing a completely different character or picking a different point of view that we’ve never written in or giving ourselves a word count constraint. Constraints can be good for us. So can facing our fear and doing what we fear anyway.
No matter what, don’t let that fear tell you what you can and can’t do. Prove it wrong. Do it anyway, and watch how you become so much better as a writer.
