Another month, another WriYe blog topic! This one is a bit of a doozy and so begins the eternal dilemma of “how honest should I be?”. I feel like I know what the ‘right’ answer is and yet it’s not what is true for me and I’m not sure what that says about me. I guess all I can do is just write from the heart, as I always do with blog topics which is why they are such rambles, and hope that is ok.

I don’t particularly want to be cast out of the writer community haha.

Why do you love writing? Do you always love writing?
Sometimes when the words are flowing and I’m into the story then I think that I love it. However, at the end of the day if I’m truly honest I don’t think it’s writing that I actually love – it’s story. Writing is the easiest method for me to express the stories and ideas that I wish to bring to life. I suppose it’s a “fork in the road” type thing. As a child if my mum had been artistic then I would probably have become an artist and the stories in my head would be expressed that way. If I had more confidence and more social ability then I might well have gone into film and tried to make little movies. If I had more patience then I’d have learned how to model and animate and produced cartoons. I think that probably makes my point. I was a reader as a child so the first medium I really saw stories was in words on a page. It’s natural in that context that I instinctively turned to words to bring my stories to life.

Most of the time, if I’m truly honest, I kinda hate writing because it doesn’t do justice to the story in my mind. The words just feel so inadequate and I despair that my skills with writing will never be enough. I feel like I will never be a good enough writer to share my stories with the world. In the past I took a chance and I indie-published but that was before I had my second and third mental regression. My confidence has never been good but in recent years it has plummeted well past what I’d previously considered rock bottom. I want to write because I want to tell my stories, I want them to exist. They are like movies in mind and I suppose I wish I could call Hollywood and just have them made (I know that’s stupid).

So to summarise my rambles: I love writing because it is the easiest medium to tell my stories. I don’t always love it because I feel words are inadequate (my skills are inadequate) and so it doesn’t then work as a story medium how I wish.

What do you do when you (gasp) don’t?
Scream?

Well obviously not – I live with other people – but it’s just very frustrating. I’m in that pit of despair right now. A lot of it is to do with external issues making my mental health worse but writing does play a part. I am desperate to tell my stories because I love them and, as I’ve said repeatedly, I want to bring them to life so other people can maybe love them too. To digress slightly for a moment I think maybe this is a slight product of fandom. I know what it is to love somebody else’s creation and so I think it’s my ultimate dream that someday somebody might feel that way about something of mine.

The correct answer to this question is persistence. I do try but I’m scared that I don’t try as hard as I should. I’m held back a lot by fear. I’m terrified that I’ll never be good enough and illogically that paralyses me. Intellectually I know I’ll never be good enough if I don’t start, finish, revise, revise again, revise some more etc. I get very angry with myself because I know what I need to do but I just don’t do it … or at least I don’t do it as much as I feel I should. I suppose I have persisted because I’ve stuck with this writing gig since I decided I’d try writing original fiction back in 2007. (Obviously I had written a lot before then but that was when I decided I wanted to be published one day and committed to putting in the effort to make that happen). I just feel like I’m not doing enough, I should be doing more and faster.

I suppose the truthful answer is that I panic and I hide and run away and sometimes get really upset. Wow what a downer. Sorry about that. Usually in order to survive I distract myself with video games and lego and TV. Sometimes this helps me work out plot problems as it percolates at the back of my mind while I’m busy with something else. Mostly though it just keeps me calm when I’m so frustrated I really do want to scream.

This writing gig ain’t easy…