The hard does not make it great

Dispelling the tortured writer myth.

For a long time, I believed I had to suffer to create art. That if I weren’t tortured by the process, the writing wouldn’t be any good. If I didn’t agonize over every single word, then I wasn’t doing it right.

It felt necessary to operate like this because I believed it was the path to the best finished manuscript. Once I was done, I could breathe a sigh of relief and admire my trophy. My perfect, polished book. It would all be worth it.

Untitled (MoMA, Seated Woman Writing Near Spherical Sculpture) by Garry Winogrand. Credit: Art Institute of Chicago

Perfectionism is a double-edged sword. Without the high standards I set for myself, I wouldn’t have been able to write a 75,000-word manuscript. Perfectionism is such a drag though. It’s not really any fun. It can make me feel like a masochist sometimes.

That’s not to say that drafting the entire book has always felt tedious. I still found satisfaction in a well-crafted sentence or writing an effective scene. Generally speaking though, I identified with the tortured writer persona. I accepted as fact that writing was just really hard. “If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it!” Tom Hanks’ character Jimmy Dugan screams in A League of Their Own. “It’s the hard that makes it great!”

I don’t believe this any more. An activity intrinsically being hard does not make it great, whether it’s writing a book or playing baseball or anything else.

What’s more, when I began this recent revision of my manuscript, I realized that the tortured writer myth was holding me back. While the pieces that make a book were there — the story, the characters, the plot — the pages felt so stiff. My desire for control, to achieve perfectionism, had the opposite effect. I hadn’t allowed myself to be curious or exploratory, and that was evident on the page.

I’m approaching this revision with a mindset shift. I can already feel the change it’s having on my writing.

Instead of: I must make this chapter tight, clean, as impactful as it can be. Every. Word. Counts.

I’m trying: What might make this scene richer? What if I tried a flash-forward? What if I went on a mini-tangent and explored where it went?

This is a more pleasant way to spend one’s limited free time. Yes, I still have an ambitious goal to publish a book, but I no longer believe I need to torture myself to accomplish said goal. I’m reminded of this passage from Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman, which I just finished reading.

We have to show up as fully as possible here, in the swim of things as they are. None of that means you don’t get to harbor ambitious plans as well — about the things you’ll accomplish, the fortune you’ll accumulate, or the difference you’ll make to the world. Far from it. It means you get to pursue those goals and feel alive and absorbed while pursuing them, instead of postponing the aliveness to when or if they’re achieved. — Oliver Burkeman

No one asked me to write a book. This isn’t something I have to do. I’m writing a book because I want do. Because I chose to. Because I get to.

I consider myself lucky that I have writing because it gives me purpose. Even when I need to step away from it when life becomes difficult, I know I can always come back to it. I find comfort in that.

Writing news

At the end of March I’ll be attending my first Association of Writers & Programs (AWP) Conference. I was also accepted to the Disquiet International Literary Program in Lisbon this summer. These are big investments and slightly terrifying leaps to make because both will set me outside my comfort zone. If you’ve attended either and have tips or tricks to make them a positive experience for an introvert, I’d appreciate it!

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