Do You Love Having Written?

Or do you love writing?

Is writing your “calling?” Is it your “passion?” Are you following your “bliss?” Could these questions possibly be more obnoxious?

I bet you already place enough expectations on yourself about your writing—

or, more likely, about the times when you’re not writing—without other people treating it as something that requires single-minded immersion, a declaration of devotion, and abstinence from all other aspects of life.

You’re not a monk in a monastery, taking vows of celibacy and silence. You’re a writer.

Writing is an activity, a craft, an art. It doesn’t have to light you up from within every moment of every day. So long as it lights you up enough of the time to keep you coming back for more.

Maybe when you’ve got lots to express and the words are coming easily, when you’re in that coveted state of flow, you’re all about your writing.

But when it’s a struggle—when you’ve got great ideas but not the right words to convey them, or you’ve got a beginning and an end but no middle, or you’re worried your dialogue sounds trite, or you can’t figure out why present tense isn’t working as you’d expected—writing might not be pleasurable. In fact, it might be a real grind.

At those times, to quote a phrase mistakenly attributed to Dorothy Parker, you don’t want to write. You want to have written.

I hope you don’t take that to mean that you lack the requisite fire in the belly.

I adore writing…sometimes. I get a real kick out of it…sometimes. I feel mentally better the days I write…when it’s going well. I love when I finally come up with the precise word I want or develop a cool concept or invent a metaphor that surprises even me with its originality. Then, writing is a jolt of adrenalin, a clearing out of brain fuzz, a balm for my anxiety. I sit up straighter, I smile more, I feel…lighter. It’s the best feeling.

At other times, I avoid or even dread writing. I’ll pay bills or pay extra attention to my students’ work. I’ll look up the ages of random celebrities (and whether some are dead or alive). I’ll check out my elementary school crush on social media. I’ll procrastinate like my life depends on it. And all because I’m afraid of the blank page and the possibility that I won’t be able to fill it with anything decent, never mind great.

This isn’t so different from the behavior of my pandemic puppy, Zoey, a mixed-breed rescue who’s curious about ev-ery-thing. But once she makes her move towards a person or the vacuum cleaner or hurtles onto the kitchen counter, she scares herself, backs off, and even cowers. That’s pretty much how I am with my writing.

In my personal essay writing classes, I introduce my students to the “types” that Betsy Lerner, a writer and literary agent, has identified in her wonderful book, The Forest for the Trees. I ask my students which best describes them: The Ambivalent, The Natural, The Wicked Child, The Self-Promoter, or The Neurotic. In just about every class, at least two-thirds of the students identify as The Ambivalent Writer. So, there you have it: a class of ambivalent creative writing majors taught by an ambivalent writer! I realize that sounds disastrous, but, surprisingly, it’s not.

Here’s some of what Lerner has to say: “For most writers, writing is a love-hate affair. But for the ambivalent writer who cannot attempt, sustain, or complete a piece of writing, the ambivalence usually shifts back and forth from the writing to the self.” In other words, having some ambivalence while assuming every other writer is experiencing non-stop grand passion can lead you to feeling bad about yourself, which will in turn cause you to avoid writing or to bounce from one project to another, completing nothing. And then you’re bound to feel even worse about yourself.

But don’t despair. Lerner goes on to say that the only real difference she can discern between writers who stick with writing and those who quit is that the former are able to “contain their ambivalence long enough to commit to a single idea and see it through.”

Ambivalence isn’t necessarily a problem. But giving in to it can be.

I’ve also noticed that ambivalence and procrastination often go hand in hand. It’s not that you’re permanently shying away from a project, you just keep delaying the inevitable work that needs to get done. From my experience teaching highly creative and sensitive college students for more than 20 years, the procrastinators are often the perfectionists. I think they suffer from what world-renowned dancer-choreographer Twyla Tharp listed as one of her perpetual fears in her invaluable book, The Creative Habit. The fear is that, once executed, your idea will never be as good as it was in your mind. That belief could easily lead you to a “get to it later” mentality. Tharp has learned to manage this fear by treating creativity as a habit that requires practice and discipline—no excuses. She’s hard core!

But another way of dealing with procrastination is to just go with it. Maybe it’s a part of your process that works for you—unless it causes you to miss deadlines or let other people down. You might need the adrenalin rush that comes with knowing something’s due imminently. Or you might be relegating your writing project to a subordinate (in this case, your unconscious mind), who diligently works on it while you spend the rest of the day being productive at your paid job, living a life that might provide you with all sorts of juicy material for your novel or memoir, or just getting stuff done around the house.

I attended a reading years ago by one of my favorite authors, Amy Bloom, at the old Waterstone’s Bookstore on Newbury Street in Boston. I’ve never forgotten Bloom’s description of how she approaches her work (and even recalled it to Bloom a few years later at another reading, where she said I did a good imitation of her!). When a young woman in the audience asked the inevitable question about her “process,” Bloom said something in her droll delivery along the lines of: Welll, I get the kids off to school and make a cup of coffee. Next, I throw in a load of laundry. I talk to a friend or two on the phone. And, then, around 3:00, I finally settle down to write. When the kids come home and want something from me, I say, Can’t you see I’m writing?

We all laughed. I also felt seen…and hopeful. Clearly, whether Bloom feels any ambivalence about writing, or procrastination is simply part of her process, she’s managed to produce nine books.

So, how can you push forward with your writing even when you don’t feel like it? One way I’ve found is playing what I call the So What? game. It goes like this: I’m not as tormented as some of the writing geniuses who flashed with brilliance but also burned out quickly. So what? I’ll live a longer, hopefully happier, life with many more years of writing ahead of me. My writing so far has not always met the high standard I’ve set for yourself. So what? I’ll keep writing until it does. Or, I may never meet that elusive standard, but it will inspire me to keep trying and, in the meantime, I’ll become a better writer. And so on.

See what happens if you try this for yourself. And accept that ambivalence may be the condition of caring too much, not caring too little.

Do you ever feel ambivalent about writing? Please share your experiences in the comments below, and feel free to reply to each others’ responses. Thanks, as always, for being so open with this wonderful (and growing) writing community!