I recently received a DM on Twitter in response to a tweet I posted that went viral. (Note how casually I said that, which is total artifice; I was fangirling over my follower engagement for two days straight).
The person who sent it to me was asking two questions, essentially. One, how do you make time in your life to write, and two, how do you persevere until the end of a daunting project?
What I posted on Twitter was this:
What makes you a Real Writer isn’t fame or a book deal. It’s showing up, even when you don’t want to, and doing the work. I struggled with three sentences today for half an hour. Had I given up, I would have missed the chance to dig in and get creative. Don’t miss out. #amwriting
I would post those three sentences, but I am working on a pivotal portion of my book and can’t do so without revealing a major spoiler. I would also like a medal for them anyway; please see my contact page for details on how to get it to me.
Writing is hard. I am painfully slow at forcing sentences and paragraphs to show themselves. Every time I see someone post on Twitter about how they’ve written 10,000 words in one afternoon, I consider throwing my computer out the window and finding another calling that will cause me less agony, like juggling fire, or cliff jumping.
Nevertheless, I know I will always come back to writing. I have done it again, and again, and again, since I was four years old. I don’t have a choice; it’s part of me. Unlike a spleen or an eyeball, it is a polarizing, obsessive, all-encompassing, demanding force at the heart of whatever it is that makes me tick. See what I did there?
That’s not to say clearing creative space in my life has been easy. On an emotional level, it’s mostly been about accepting who I am — a woman more fascinated by the art of storytelling than literally anything else. Logistically speaking, to persevere in the act of writing you must do three things: 1) make time, 2) do the work, and 3) show up, unerringly.
We’ll cover #1 and #2 first.
If I don’t write first thing in the morning (in my life that’s 5 a.m. — feel free to groan collectively, because I do), it doesn’t happen. Even if you’re not an aggrieved early bird like me, figure out a parcel of time that will belong to you, and you alone. Make it a non-negotiable portion of your day/week/time on the subway/time in the school pick-up line/whatever suits you. You can do it, and if you don’t think you can, consider the fact that even 15 minutes of daily writing time adds up to almost 100 hours over the course of a year.
The second part is both easier and typically much harder to manage — putting yourself in front of your computer or notebook when you could easily be Doing That Thing Right Now that would have a more immediate effect on your life. If you’re a writer, you’re automatically playing the long game. Do it anyway.
Why? Writing is all about rules, as anyone who’s ever suffered through a middle school grammar class can attest. Being a writer is mostly about knowing how to break them to elevate your story (or whatever you are creating) in a new and different way. How do you know which rules to break? Instinct. How do you cultivate instinct? Thousands of hours, practicing the rules. These days, I can “hear” when a sentence is fumbling. From there, I can back into how I’ll fix it and keep the rhythm going, but that certainly wasn’t always the case.
Which leads me to #3 — and the only thing that makes anyone a Real Writer — show up, even when you don’t want to. The path to becoming skilled at writing, or at anything, really, is to build layers of competency on top of deliberate goals. Forward motion, no matter how small, is worth it when done with frequency. Anyone who tells you that they birthed their first novel fully formed from an unedited premise is lying to you. Ariavide, Ever Onward will be born into a world on top of several thousand pages’ worth of short stories, poems, novellas, and other novels that I labored over in the moment, but ultimately left behind. Was it all worth it? Absolutely. It’s all a part of the long game.
Dig in. Don’t give up, and don’t be afraid to accept that a level of discomfort is part of the process. I’m a fantasy writer, and I truly believe that the act of writing allows me to manifest magic in my real life. Who wants to miss out on that? A sentence becomes a paragraph, and a paragraph becomes a chapter, one step at a time. Be a Real Writer — show up, and keep going.
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Joanna Harmonosky 