creative writing · Editing Tips · Historical Fiction · Writing · Writing Tips

Writing is Hard

Giuli

I’ve come to the conclusion, in the last couple of months, that writing a book with 100% seriousness and dedication is one of the hardest professional challenges a person can face. At least it has been for me. Not even graduate school was this hard (or maybe I’m forgetting my #gradschoolproblems). Anyway, I think part of the reason why I’m blogging about my writing journey is so that when I finally do finish this manuscript—and the next ones to come—I can look back and see where I started and acknowledge the progress that I will have made.

Yesterday was supposed to be a writing/editing day, one fully dedicated to my current WIP. I work as a freelance editor, helping college and graduate students with their research papers, theses, and dissertations, so I know a thing or two about editing. But honest to God, yesterday it felt like my editing skills magically disappeared from my mind. I stared at my computer screen for about two to three hours trying to edit one specific scene that I had rewritten over 10 times since March. I became so frustrated with my lack of progress and with the words before me that I felt I had wasted three hours of my day.

By the time night came around, I was emotionally exhausted because my mind repeatedly reminded me of how terrible my writing was. The funny thing is that I know I’m not the only writer out there who has felt this way. I think that the perfectionist persona in us is always trying to make our writing better, and oftentimes we fall into a recurring wave of negative thoughts that are detrimental to our emotional and mental health.

The reason why I’m sharing this is because when I’m having a good day, I don’t believe I’m a horrible writer. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be putting my best effort and taking the time to write this novel. I wouldn’t be blogging about it either. I truthfully love this story and the characters, and I don’t want to do them a disservice by not writing the best narrative that I know they deserve.

To end on a more positive note, I was able to edit 30 pages this morning! I left the scene that was giving me a hard time alone, and I’ll come back to it sometime later in the week. Anyway, if you can relate to this rant, just remember that you can do this! You were given your story(ies) for a reason, and nobody can write it the way that you can!

Keep writing, my friends!

Published by Giuli

I’m an Early Americanist, blogger, editor, business owner, and writer.

16 thoughts on “Writing is Hard”

  3. It is hard, and it gets harder as the work grows longer–more thoughts to hold in the mind. My own theory is that the tendency to self-edit before getting the whole ms down on e-paper is the enemy. I understand it at my core, not merely as an editor but as someone who has written for publication. The way I suggest most people deal with it is to drop a comment at the suitable spot, something like ‘nts pv’ which tells me “This is a note to myself: recast this para to remove passive voice.”

    Sometimes I think we rush back to edit ourselves so that we will address the problem while we have it in mind; at my age, this increases in importance. But if we leave a note to jog our memories later, we can consider that we will ultimately answer our ‘nts rewrite and fix continuity issues’ when we blow through on our self-editing. Or, of course we have our own editors fix them–but that’s an individual choice.

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    1. That’s great advice! I also leave myself comments along the way and tackle them depending on what type of edits (developmental or other) I’m working on at the moment.

      Thanks so much for sharing your insights!

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  4. Love this article and I can definitely relate to this, I faced similar challenges during the process of writing my, now released, EBook and it was horrible! I’m wishing you the best of success with your book and I’m happy to hear that you got out of the rut, so to speak! 🙌

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      1. You’re very welcome, thank you very much for sharing this story! Many will share the good times and not the bad, so I love to see you keeping it real! 🙌

        I’m almost certain that every writer hits multiple stages of roadblocks during the creation process. It seems to be a natural part of writing and in my experience, taking a short break away from the laptop works wonders – rather than getting worked up about it thinking “Do I just suck at writing?” 😅

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  5. I am just beginning blogging and attempting to write articles and short stories. It can be so hard and so discouraging. I struggle all the time. Thanks for your encouragement.

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  7. I’ve tried writing my book a number of times over the years, I just don’t have the time lol I’m far to busy, I did put a years worth of daily blogging together as a book which was interesting, we had a lot going on at the time lol, but it took an age to edit

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