Writing is fun. Writing is hard.
Like any creative endeavor, it has its peaks and valleys. Moments of inspiration are short and writing through incomplete ideas, long. For the hobbyist, indulging in your chosen art only when inspiration hits gives a false impression that, if one were to do it full time, everyday would offer the same reward.
That’s not even close to the truth. Like anything you want to do for a living, it is also, and forever will be, a business. And business requires product. Business doesn’t care about inspiration, it cares about perspiration. It doesn’t wait for peaks, it exists in valleys as well.
Writing through the valleys is tough, when you feel you have nothing in the tank, when you know most of it will get thrown out. Writing in a valley can often times be an exercise of not expressing a story, but rediscovering it.
Those are the hard days.
Like any other writer, some times those days hit me with surprising intensity. Some days I look at something I thought was amazing and, with doubting eyes, now believe it is worthless. Sometimes you feel like you’re making a difference in the world and some you feel like you’re writing for an empty room.
Even though I had been writing my entire life, it is only recently that I’ve begun to enjoy the process of writing. Coming from a screenwriting background, I used to consider writing as a necessary step to a creative end, because the screenplay wasn’t the finished product.
Now, I am starting to have fun creating worlds, characters and seemingly impossible situations. But, doing so can still be both hard and elating. Like any good deed, the more difficult the challenge, the sweeter the reward.
Anyone can write during the peaks. Writing through the valleys is the difference between someone who dreams of being a writer and someone who actually is one.