May 15th 2008
I Hate Writing
I hate writing. I always have. Writing papers in high school and college was excruciating, even after I’d honed my craft finely enough to be able to write eight pages in two hours and get my B.
I still hate it. Is there anything worse than getting up in the morning and staring at a bare white screen? (Don’t answer that question, it’s rhetorical. There is much that’s worse.) Every day I procrastinate as long as I can, going to the bathroom every fifteen minutes, making sure all the dishes are put away, tidying my work area. Finally, when I can’t stomach my laziness any more, I sit down and start to write. Two sentences come out, and then I have to play at least one game of Freecell. Or maybe two. Then five sentences, followed by more Freecell, then a couple paragraphs, more Freecell, and so on, the writing eventually lasting longer than the Freecell. Not that the Freecell ever goes away completely.
It does get better as I get further along. First drafts are always the worst. I have to write in order to think (I couldn’t write an outline if next fall’s election depended on it) , so my blank screen is really blank. Gradually, as I start to get the ideas down, it gets easier. By the final draft I’m hardly playing any Freecell at all. But it’s still tough, and most of the time I’d rather be riding my bike, or playing Civ II, or letting Alaskan fishermen use my body as bait for king crabs.
When I finish, there’s generally a flash of joy that often leaves me blinded on the road to Damascus and lasts for about five minutes, at which point I start worrying about what I have to write next.
You might ask, why do I write at all? The answer? Because the only thing I hate more than writing is not writing.
Which is another post entirely.
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S.C. Butler
Butler is the author of The Stoneways Trilogy from Tor Books: Reiffen's Choice, Queen Ferris, and The Magician's Daughter. Find out what Reiffen does with magic, and what magic does with him... Visit site.
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1. Kate Elliott on May 15th, 2008 at 2:07 am
This sounds a lot like my process- and I love writing. Except when I’d rather be playing Freecell (which I don’t have on my iMac, although maybe that’s for the best).
2. Jeff on May 15th, 2008 at 7:36 am
While I can certainly understand and often share in the desire to avoid writing, it makes me just a little bit nuts when I hear successfully published authors talk about how much they hate writing.
I myself have written five novels, and have been searching for an agent or editor to take me on for 11 years now. If I was lucky enough to have a book in print I wouldn’t complain about what a chore it is to write - I’d be over the moon with joy, and grateful for the opportunity to present my work to a broad audience.
3. Karen Wester Newton on May 15th, 2008 at 10:58 am
Jeff– yeah, it does kind of remind me of that old commercial for something or other where rich people would complain about the rising cost of polo pony food. It’s hard to dredge up sympathy. But from what I’ve heard at conferences, it’s a common syndrome among writers. Maybe there’s something about being a writer that attracts procrastinators? Or maybe it’s a deadline thing that no one gets until they have one?
4. Simon Haynes on May 15th, 2008 at 11:04 am
“Because the only thing I hate more than writing is not writing.”
I think that’s the sentence you should be looking at.
5. S.C. Butler on May 15th, 2008 at 11:31 am
Kate - Your anti-Freecell solution sounds like one I should adopt. I haven’t been able to find any other cure.
Jeff - Sorry to have suggested I’m in any way ungrateful for being published. I had hoped to sound more bantering than whiny. But I felt pretty much the same when I was unpublished (six novels in the trunk) - writing is just something I’ve never enjoyed, except at the end. Writing is work, and it’s even more work after you’re published, when you’re saddled with a whole new set of demands that are much less fun (and much less rewarding) than writing.
Karen - I think procrastination is endemic to anything you have to do by yourself. The few times I’ve written in collaboration with someone else we hardly procrastinated at all. And it was a lot of fun, too!
Simon - Exactly.
6. Kelly McCullough on May 15th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
I love it. I do procrastinate, don’t get me wrong–that’s the reason I’ve removed all games from the laptop–but the longer I procrastinate the worse I feel. I honestly love that blank page and thinking about all the things I could use to fill it up and pretty much the whole process. It’s the selling and the promotion that I get whiny about, though I’m very grateful to have the opportunity to whine about them.
7. Kate Elliott on May 15th, 2008 at 5:48 pm
I love to write; for me the procrastination fills up the time between when I need to sit down and start and when the actual writing begins flowing. Interestingly, I don’t remember having this problem 20 years ago.
8. Alma Alexander on May 15th, 2008 at 6:04 pm
Kelly said: “It’s the selling and the promotion that I get whiny about, though I’m very grateful to have the opportunity to whine about them.”
Word.
I love writing. More than that - I depend on writing. It’s what makes me what I am, WHO I am, and without it I think I would wither.
Selling the stuff… is a different animal. I don’t like that so much. I am not a naturally GREGARIOUS person and schmoozing with people I do not know makes me uneasy - on the whole I’d rather be home writing - but it’s something that has to be done for the rest of it to get off the ground I guess.
It’s the REWRITING I don’t like, and the tweaks, and the endless angsting over whether something is finally “good enough”. Writing is wonderful. Letting go of what you have written is damned hard.
9. S.C. Butler on May 15th, 2008 at 7:48 pm
Alma - I actually like the rewriting best. Refining the idea, polishing the words, bringing the characters to full and ample life. Watching the story finally come to life.
And perhaps I should have said, not that I hate writing, but that I find it difficult. Very difficult. For me it is often easy to get a story wrong, but very hard to get it right. It takes time, and care, and patience.
And I am an impatient fellow.
10. Simon Haynes on May 15th, 2008 at 8:58 pm
Revising my early drafts - now THAT I enjoy.
And the marketing. Love that part.
11. chrisweuve on May 15th, 2008 at 9:35 pm
Jeff — I think the lesson is that it’s work, even for the published.
FWIW, I understand the hating to write part. What was it Heinlein said (quoting someone else, I think): “Writers don’t like to write, they like to have written.” (YMMV.)
Some of my “favorite” activities over the last 30 years have been things that I wanted to quit but just couldn’t.
The secret, I think, is to make the OCD work *for* you…
12. Jeff on May 16th, 2008 at 7:08 am
Writing certainly is work, a labor of love.
Sometimes it’s a chore, but there are times when it feels as if I’ve really tapped into something greater than myself, and I can’t write fast enough. It’s those rare moments that make me love and stick with the act of writing.
S.C., there’s no need to apologize. As I said, I do understand the feeling you’re talking about. I also thought of the quote about loving to have written, rather than the act of writing itself.
13. Kelly McCullough on May 16th, 2008 at 10:50 am
chrisweuve, the OCD bit made me laugh out loud–since I’m editing a book in the lobby of my hotel (don’t ask) I got some very strange looks. A couple months back I made a comment on a writer friend’s blog saying I was a little bit OCD about one aspect of the then WIP. Another friend on the blog (also a novelist) said* dude, you write novels for a living, there is nothing sort of about your OCD.
*paraphase for context’s sake.
14. vimoh on May 16th, 2008 at 1:07 pm
People still play Freecell. I guess writers should have minimal computers. Nothing but the word processor. I totally relate.
15. S.C. Butler on May 16th, 2008 at 8:04 pm
vimoh - I actually have an old stripped-down laptop that I love. But when I travel I need internet access and that would mean I’d have to transfer wips from one computer to the other, which I would forget, so I just leave everything on the up-to-date-model.
16. Simon Haynes on May 17th, 2008 at 2:06 am
I deliberately chose a new laptop without wifi (this was four years ago, when such beasts were still available.)
Eventually I caved in and bought a wireless network card for it, but when I’m writing (properly) I take that card and put it in the laundry, forty metres away. Otherwise I’d be ‘just checking email’ or ‘catching up on the news’ all day.
With the desktop I’ve resorted to yanking the network cable to force myself to get on with it, but I have to be careful because my PC has a bunch of scheduled backup tasks which duplicate everything to network storage.
17. Karl Ziellenbach on May 17th, 2008 at 3:53 am
Nice entry, Sam. I go through periodic cycles of eliminating distractions and being focused, but they’re usually short-lived. Sometimes writing seems to crawl and revision/rewrites become torturous. But like you say, if I don’t write, it bugs me even more. Hope to see you in Pittsburgh.
18. S.C. Butler on May 19th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
Karl - Definitely see you in Pittsburgh!