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Friday, March 25, 2016

How to Not Stop Writing

Stop writing.
Give up and don't start again.
Stop doing the thing that makes you crazy and hurts your heart and makes you a misery to be around.
Stop writing.

It's easier to start writing than to stop - that's the way of any addiction, right?
But I'm not going to tell you lies.

I'm not one of those people who have to write. I don't feel that if I didn't write, I'd die.

I'd be fine. I have a job I love and am good at. And I can paint and draw and dance and sing for the pleasure of being creative. Writing is something I choose to do, as hard as it is.

I could stop.

Last year around this time something happened that almost made me stop writing. I failed at something pretty spectacularly. It was, to put it mildly, devastating. And I didn't know if I could recover the blow to my writing ego. Worse, I didn't know if I wanted to. You see, if I stopped writing, all of the negative feelings would go away. I wouldn't be open to failing that way again.

Fast forward to today and I'm writing again, still. I wonder, how did I do it? How did I not stop writing when it would have been so much better for my happiness?

1) Happiness isn't everything.
2) Writing makes me feel new things and scary, amazing things that I have forgotten how to feel.
3) The "What if..." habit is a hard one to break once you pick it up.
4) I have people. Squad. Wonderful, brilliant humans who tell me to shut the f**k up and start writing because THEY want to read the worlds I create.
5) My husband does not take no for an answer when it comes to believing in me. He's a stubborn son of a bitch (sorry, mom-in-law.)

That's how you do it. That's how you keep going. You just do.


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