151: Common Myths About Writing

 

There are so many myths about writing that are either ridiculous or downright harmful. We debunk four of them in this episode.

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Common myths about writing

Hi friends, welcome back to your big creative life. I'm standing for today's episode. You can maybe see it in the YouTube video. I just have been sitting all day because I'm doing a massive writing day. Today, my goal is to write 5000 words, and I've actually gotten to like almost 6000 words, because I've been repurposing some stuff. I probably I took probably like 1500 maybe even 2000 words from an old version of my book that I have since scrapped, but didn't throw it away. Never throw any of your writing away. Keep it in a separate file. Just don't delete it, because you never know when you're gonna maybe want to use it again. This is I'm writing a book in 30 days, which is absolute insanity, but this is a book that I started, a psychological thriller that I started a while ago, and I just need a push to get it done.

 

So I was like, All right, I'm not doing NaNoWriMo because I don't want to support the organization. And also, like, I don't want to wait till November. So I'm just going to write a book in 30 days. And I started October 2. I want to say October 3, something like that. And so today was a big writing push, because I'm very, very, very behind schedule. So I think with the new total of all the words that I wrote today, I think I'm at like the 15,000 word mark, which is exciting. I'm aiming for 70,000 words for this first draft, maybe 65 somewhere in there. I tend to write kind of bare bones on my rough draft, and then I need to go in and add more description, add more interiority for the characters, add more thrillery Ness, more suspense.

 

So I know I'll have an opportunity to do that, and that'll bump up the word count. So I'm fine if my first draft is like 65 to 70. So 15k is not bad, but yeah, I really got to keep the momentum going and keep going so but anyways, I've been sitting all day because of that, and I'm like, I just need to stand. I need to to, yeah, I'm doing a workout class later, before I pick up Audrey from daycare. And after I record the podcast, I'm going to record two podcast episodes today, and then I think I'm going to do another writing push after, but we'll see. We'll see. I'm gonna do a podcast episode talking about, like, once the 30 days are done and fingers crossed, I've hopefully completed a first draft, I'll do a podcast episode talking about the experience and what I learned, and the strategies and the tips, so that if you want to do something similar, you can maybe that would be helpful.

 

So yeah, but in today's episode, we're going to dive into common myths that we just have to debunk. These are things that I believe to be true and like Gospel before I started writing, and even at the beginning of when I did start writing, it was just like, oh, this is just how it is when you write a book. These are just yeah, these are facts, but they're not. They're myths, and we got to just cut this shit out. We got it. We got to debunk these. So I have, I think, four or five that we're gonna go through, not comprehensive. Again, no list that I do in this podcast is ever comprehensive, but these are the ones that I think are most common, and honestly can be the most damaging for new writers. They were kind of damaging for me when I first started, and I think they can just, I don't know, trip people up in the process, and make it harder than it needs to be to write a book. So let's get into it.

 

Number one, you can only write when you are feeling inspired, when the Muse has come down upon you and bestowed upon you these wonderful ideas, and you're feeling lit up and in the flow and like you've got all this creative energy and inspired to no no, that is wonderful and magical, and I am a fan of when that happens, believe me, it's magical when I experience that. But 95% of the time, that's not how writing is for me, and it's not how writing is for most people, and that's fine. That's just how it is, especially for people who don't write or, I think also just don't do anything creative, there can be this tendency to think of the creative process as mystical and magical, and there's an element of like spirituality to it that you're just bestowed these.

 

Brilliant ideas that the universe or the Muse gives you, and you have to be good stewards of them, and you have to to only like write or create when you are in this flow state and so and again, I think it's magical when that happens. But if you want to write a book, particularly if you want to write a book and you have some sort of date when you want to have it done by you're gonna have to sit down and write on days when you're not really feeling it. That's just, it's gonna happen if you have no time limit, if you're like, I don't care if it takes me 10 years to write my book. I don't care if this is something that just, it's just a hobby for me, and if I only write once every two months. That's fine. If that's you awesome. Go for it. I'm cheering you on, and that's amazing, and there's nothing wrong with that. But for most of us, we want to publish the book.

 

We want to move on to the next phase after the book is written, and doing those things requires some discipline. It requires completing your work in progress, or writing your book when you sometimes just don't feel like it even in I'll just talk about the my experience with this. The hardest part for me about writing is the mental back and forth before I actually sit down to write, writing like actually typing words out onto the page, creating the story. That's not actually the hard part. The difficult part for me is everything that comes before I put my ass in the chair to write. And from my experience working with writers, I feel like that. A lot of people would say that that's true as well, not everyone, but a lot of people. And so my mind will come up with all of these reasons about why I can't write, why I shouldn't write, why I need to wait until I'm feeling better and more inspired and whatever.

 

But if I'm on a deadline, self imposed or otherwise, and if I want to be making progress on something, sometimes I just have to do it. And then the motivation comes later, like waiting for motivation, waiting for the muse to strike. It's backwards. It's like you have to take the action. You have to get your butt in the chair, you have to open up the word doc. You have to start typing some shit, even if you're not sure where it's going before you kind of, like, get in that flow state. That's just, that's just how it works. So don't wait for the muse. Don't be precious about it. And you know, again, unless you, unless you are fine with that and just only ever want to write when you're feeling inspired. That's one approach. But for most of us, that's just not going to work. It's not going to cut it.

 

Number two, in order to write a book, you have to quit your day job, and you have to make this the number one priority, and like do nothing else with your free time. You Yeah, before I started writing, I honestly was struggling to wrap my head around how I would fit writing into my life, because the few times that I had tried writing, it was so hard and so slow, even when I actually did start writing, when I started writing from some short stories, or when I first started trying to write a book, it would take me like 45 minutes to write like 150 words, or 200 words, which is fine. I was still making progress and I was writing, which is amazing, but it felt frustrating to me. It felt frustrating because I wasn't it was just going so slow at that rate.

 

It was going to take me, like, 15 years to write a book, and I was like, how, how do people do this? And I didn't have kids, then I was, you know, I had a demanding, full time job, but, like, I didn't have kids and a ton of other responsibilities. It was just hard. It was just hard to conceptualize, like, how I was going to do this. And there was not necessarily in the writing community, but there was this messaging that I encountered online from people who were kind of like in the motivational speaker, self help, follow your passion kind of realm. And there's all this messaging around like, take big action and the universe will follow, and just believe that you can do the thing and jump before you're ready and and trust that things will work themselves out. And like, Yeah, that's fine and dandy. But I needed money, and I was not just gonna quit my job to write a book.

 

Most people that's not, that's not a financially feasible option. I mean, I guess if you have, you know, you're just, like, independently wealthy, or maybe you have a partner who can financially support you, like, unless you're one of those rare unicorns who is in that situation, and, like, you know, not rare unicorns, I shouldn't say that. But unless you're one of those people who is in that. Fortunate situation. You know, most of us can't just quit our job and like, shut ourselves in a room for 12 hours a day and write. And I don't want to write a book that way. Anyways, that's not how I work. The idea of writing for even eight hours a day makes me feel crazy. I can't do it for eight hours a day, and I love it. I'm passionate about it, but I can't do it for eight hours a day.

 

So no, you don't need to quit your day job, even if you have a busy schedule, even if you have kids, even if you work 70 hours a week, you can write your book in like 15 minute bursts of time. That's why I talk so often about writing sprints and doing writing sprints as a part of your process, because that's how, that's how you can do it. Okay, next up, sorry, let me get to my list here. Okay, art is born from struggle. We've talked on this podcast before about the struggling artist concept in our culture, in society, how there's the tortured writer who's like battling their inner demons, and why that's so damaging.

 

 I mean, look, that's one way to be a writer, absolutely, but it's not a requirement for writing. In my own instance, me, personally, not speaking for everyone here, but I was only able to really start writing and taking taking it seriously when I got sober and my depression got better, like my mental health was in a good spot. And that's not to say I always want to be careful when I say that, because I don't want to imply that, like you have to heal and get over all your trauma and be perfectly healthy before you start writing. Because that's not it at all. But for me, I was not able to write when I was that tortured, struggling person, it just wasn't I just couldn't do it. So I didn't have the courage to do it. I didn't have the time, or it's not that I didn't have the time, but I just wasn't ready to make it a priority, and I was scared. So if anything, I think that, like me creating, I'm able to do it when I'm in a healthy place. That's just, that's my experience.

 

So you can buy into that tortured writer, struggling artist kind of thing, if you want that's it's fine. It's there for a reason, but suffering and struggle and being tortured by inner demons is not a requirement to create good art, to create to write a book or a short story or whatever it is that you're creating. It's just not a requirement. And we need to let go of that stereotype. I think I have an episode, actually, of the podcast about that and why it's so damaging. So you can check that out if you want, like a deeper dive into that concept. Okay, last one how on my list, here is to write what you know. Okay, this, this is one that is a little bit grayer for me, because I understand, I understand what people mean and why this myth exists. But this is not a requirement in any way, shape or form.

 

How I view this, what I do think is valid and helpful in this idea is that, yes, it can be helpful for you to draw on your own experiences, to inform your characters, to inform your worlds, to inform your conflict, in your plot, I have infused something of myself into any like everything that I've written, not that I'm copying my life and pasting it into a fiction, fictional format, but there are little pieces of things that I've experienced personally in everything, because it's, it's just, it just comes out that way. And it's also easier for me to draw on some kernel of truth in my own life to create a character. So I might be writing a character who is vastly different from me.

 

They have a different lived experience. They've had a different childhood, different personality, all these things, but there might be a thread of something that they do, a mannerism, or something that happened in their past that is similar to mine, because it just again, it helps anchor the character for me, to infuse something from my own experience and put it into the character, into the world, or maybe not even my personal experience, but just someone I know, or something that I've experienced that's happened in the real world. Maybe it's just something like that. So for that reason, I can understand this concept of write what you know, and it's also like, if that's the story that you want to tell, is something inspired by your life or inspired by a struggle that you went through then.

 

Yes, absolutely, you can write what you know, the story's going to be richer because of it all that. However, I don't this shouldn't be a limiting thing in the sense that you can only write what you know. You can only write topics that you're familiar with. You can only write characters that you're familiar with, worlds that you're familiar with, settings that you've actually been to, that can feel restrictive. Now I do want to put a little caveat in here about characters where I do think this gets a little bit more gray than everything I just mentioned is if you are writing a character who has an identity that's outside of your own. So like me, I'll use me as an example. If I'm writing a gay black man or something like I don't have experience as a gay black man. I don't have experience as a gay person. I don't have experience as a black person.

 

I can't know what it's like to live that experience and have that identity. And it doesn't mean that I can't write a character like that, but I just have to be careful about I don't want to be telling the story of this black man who came to accept his gayness and like, learn what it means to be a black man like that's not a story that I'm that I want to be telling, that I should be telling. So in that case, you know, writing what you know, I don't know. Again, I think this is a bit of a more gray area, but I just know that for me, I do have diverse characters in my books, because I think that's important, and I want to reflect that, but I'm not writing a story from the point of view of a diverse character, and that's like the focus of who they are is some, some piece of their identity that they're diving into their lived experience as this kind of background, cultural, racial background, whatever it might be like. I'm not, I'm not the one to tell that story.

 

So in that case, write what you know, I guess there's a little bit more truth in it for that, for that, like, side of the coin, if we look at it that way, yeah, that's how I feel about it. And look, I we're talking about fiction here, because I work with fiction writers. I don't I don't work with like nonfiction or self help or anything like that. Occasionally I'll work with a memoir, a memoirist, just because memoir, some of the structural things are more similar to fiction, depending how you want to tell the story. So we're not even talking about write what you know in terms of, like telling your own life story, because you can do that too. Obviously, that's just kind of outside the scope of my expertise and the types of people that I work with the types of content that I create. So I guess we're talking about it purely in a fictional capacity.

 

So Okay, those are the myths that I wanted to just talk about and kind of dispel. Because, sorry, y'all, I'm still kind of getting over a cough. I was sick for like, a week. Yeah. I just think some of these can be, like, harmful and damaging, particularly for me, the ones that like, Oh, you have to wait for the muse to come give you inspiration. Because if that were the case, I would still be working on that first book. Years later, I would still be writing it, both because I would be going so slowly, because I hadn't learned strategies, but also because I would only be writing when I felt like it, which just doesn't happen for me very often. Maybe for some people, they wake up every single day of life just so motivated and inspired to write, and that happened. That's true for them. They have that consistency every single day. But I don't, and I don't think I'm less of a writer because of it. I don't think that I'm not passionate about writing because of it. It's just my own creative process, and I've learned that over a number of years of doing this, that that's just my process.

 

So don't feel like I don't know. Don't feel any like guilt or shame about that, if you relate to that, and you can recognize yourself in the way that I talk about my process. Okay, well, I'm going to record one more podcast episode, and then I'm gonna do, let's see. I'm gonna try for like, another 1000 words today. Yeah, I think I'm gonna do that. So wish me luck. All right, thank you for listening, and I'll talk to you soon. Thank you so much for listening.

Katie Wolf