032: Stop Believing This Myth About Writing
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stop believing this myth about writing
Hi, friends, I waited until I was a little calmer to record this. And in hindsight, maybe I should have just recorded when I was all ready to rant and rave and post about this thing that I saw on social media, but you know that that's, it's fine, it's probably better to wait. So there are a lot of myths about writing, there are a lot of harmful myths about what it means to be creative, the creative process, and one has come up for me a lot on social media is the myth that if writing were truly a passion, if you truly were passionate about it, it wouldn't be hard, and you would always want to do it. And that is just the biggest pile of bullshit. That's not true.
Some some context here, where this, this first came up, I posted a tiktok A while ago, and it was a tiktok that went viral. And it showed my morning, almost like a little vlog, it kind of showed my morning routine a little bit like making some making an iced chai sitting down at my desk, pulling up my computer, and getting ready to do a writing sprint. And then I talked in a voiceover in the tiktok about what my process is and writing sprints, and how much they've changed my life and changed my writing. So there was a comment that someone made saying, "well, all of this preparation that you're doing to write suggests to me that writing is not your passion, and it's just a task that you have to do." And I responded to that comment with a video. And I was perfectly polite, and you know, didn't blast the person. But I just said, Hey, let's talk about this idea, this harmful idea that if something is a passion of yours, that you always want to do it and that you don't ever need motivation, because you just love it so much. You want to do it all day. Like, that's not been my experience. And that's not the experience of 99% of the writers that I know, in my real life, of the clients that I work with people on social media.
Of course, there are people who literally cannot wait to sit down and write every single day. And they're just so inspired, where what they're doing. And so that it's never a chore for them to sit down and write like, I'm sure those people exist. But for 99% of us. That's not the case. And I said that if I only wrote in the video, the response that I did, I said, Listen, if I only wrote when I was feeling super passionate and super inspired and lit up, I would write maybe once a month. And writing once a month for me is not enough, it would take me years to write a book. If I did that, that's just not going to cut it for me. And so sometimes I do have to sit down and write when I don't necessarily really want to. And oftentimes what happens is when I get my ass in the chair and start writing, then it gets better. And then it's easier for me to do it and I'm fine by the time I get done, I'm even glad but I pushed myself to write that day. Sometimes not. But the point is that simply being passionate about something is not enough. You need to have discipline, you need to have a habit. And I got a comment recently, kind of along the same lines where someone was saying that, "well, I'm this way. I'm passionate. I'm truly passionate about my writing. And I love to write and I write every day." And you know, if you're listening to this, and you're one of those people who that's your experience, like great, I'm so happy for you that that's your experience. That's wonderful. But again, not my experience and not the experience of most writers that I know, especially if you are like me, in that getting the first draft out is hard. That's the hardest part for me. Once I get a really rough draft out, I'm so ready to go and edit and I find a lot of ease and flow in that so.
So the another thing that this person's comment said is that well I wouldn't call it a passion if you need that much discipline. It's probably a habit; and I just I just think that it's so harmful to tell people to tell someone who's a newer writer and who doesn't who doesn't have a lot of experience with motivation and writing, that if you don't want to write, there must be something wrong with you that you are not a true writer, that you are not passionate enough about writing. So maybe you should just stop and give up. Because if you're not passionate all the time, like all day, every day, then what's the point? And that's just not true. I feel like I've been talking a lot in this podcast lately about motivation. And remember, motivation is fleeting, it's going to come and go, some days you will be motivated. Some days, you will feel passionate and some days, it's just not going to be there. And that's okay. Especially if you are stuck on something, if you are in the middle of a hard scene to write, if you have writer's block, if you can't figure out how to resolve a plot inconsistency. That's difficult, and there might be some resistance, and you might not want to sit down and have to deal with it. That doesn't mean that your not passionate about writing.
Somebody made a comment in this this big thread of people talking about passion versus discipline and writing. And someone mentioned Olympic athletes: no one would ever argue that an Olympic athlete is not passionate about their sport. To get to the Olympics, as an athlete, you have to be extremely dedicated and focused and passionate about it. Because otherwise, you're never going to want to put the time in to get good at your sport. And to sacrifice the things that you have to sacrifice in order to get really good and eventually go to the Olympics, right? I would never look at a professional athlete an Olympic athlete, whatever and say, Well, yeah, they're just because they don't always want to, I don't know, run Basketball Drills or run like training on downhill skiing, or whatever the sport is, because they don't always want to do that when they wake up in the morning, they're not passionate, sometimes you need the habit and the discipline to get you out the door, and doing the thing. I just, I we really have to stop with this.
And the other thing that's harmful about this whole, oh, if it's passionate, you would just do it all the time. That's a very close relative to Oh, if you are passionate about it, you would just do it for free. Which is also complete and utter bullshit. As writers, we deserve to get compensated for the work that we do. As a business owner, as an editor and a writing coach, I want to get compensated for the work that I do. You can those things can exist hand in hand, you can want to get compensated for something and also be extremely passionate about it. I think it's a very slippery slope. When we start talking about passion. I mean, look at what's happening in traditional publishing right now. There, there's this max at mass exodus of editors at publishing houses leaving because the pay is terrible. Most of them are living in New York City, which has an extremely high cost of living. And there's been this narrative I've heard from people who work in publishing, there's been this narrative that it's enough to just be doing this job, because you're passionate about books, you're passionate about reading, you're passionate about helping authors tell their stories, that that should be enough. And that's not true either. And I know that's kind of a tangent, that's probably a topic for a different episode.
But I just think it's such a slippery slope, when we start to talk about passion, and what it means to be passionate about something as a creative person. So please, if you are not feeling particularly passionate about writing about your work in progress about the scene that you're currently writing, that's not a bad thing. It doesn't mean you're not cut out to be a writer, it doesn't mean that you're not going to get that passion and excitement back. It just means you're in the middle of it. And I stopped. I stopped replying. I went back and forth a couple times with this most recent comment and then I just gave up because I'm like, this is not this is not productive. Let me actually harness this. All of these thoughts that I have about this and put this into a podcast episode so that it can hopefully help someone who maybe is feeling kind of guilty that they're not 100% passionate all day, every day about the thing that they're working on in their writing life seems like a more productive way to to do it to rant about it on a podcast as opposed to going back and forth with someone in the comments.
But anyway, thank you for listening. I hope that this was helpful in some way to kind of examine how we talk about the idea of passion and creativity and writing and discipline. Because it can be harmful, especially for people who are new and don't have a lot of experience with the ups and downs of the creative process. Alright, I will see yall next week.