The problem with writing for a living when you write for fun as well is after a long day of piecing together articles, editing articles, looking up spelling and grammar, the last thing I typically want to do is go home, kick off my shoes, open my laptop and write some more.
Not wanting to write on my own time is a problem for a wannabe novelist. Not wanting to edit another single sentence is an even worse problem for a wannabe novelist with a completed manuscript gathering dust on the shelf in desperate need of editing. It turns the wannabe novelist into a struggling novelist who has just about given up the fight.
Those of you who follow my column may recall I started a writers group back in November, a place for like-minded writers to get together and discuss the trials and triumphs of the writing life, to share what they are working on and talk about the problems they are facing.
Writing is a solitary profession so I view the writers group as a sort of support group for writers in distress, a reason to
leave our desks and our frustrations behind and meet other people possibly facing similar literary issues.
My problem is I am excellent with ideas. In fact, I am currently working on about nine novels, which are fully plotted out and really exciting. Then I sit down to write and flip anxiously between each file and give up, closing my laptop and wandering off.
So the writers group advised me to take a break, reflect on the ideas, see what stuck, what I couldn't actually help working on. That is the idea I needed to focus on.
I agreed to give it a try, left the group filled with determination to take a break from my writing struggles and see which story I really couldn't live without.
A month later, I returned, distressed to report that apparently, without forcing myself to the task, I chose not to write at all.
Not helpful for a writer in distress.
Despite my growing frustrations with my inability to devote my free time to writing after spending my work time writing, I am pretty lucky. All the way through school, my teachers told me writing was a hobby and I'd need a backup plan.
I never intended to be a journalist. My backup plans included marine biology, Broadway, teaching or killer whale photography. Somehow, though, I fell into journalism, even from the beginning. Teachers would start up school newspapers and somehow include me in the staff. They would invite a few students on field trips to the printing press and always include me. I never expressed interest in journalism or newspapers but somehow, they expressed it for me.
After I graduated with my beloved English degree and panicked about what my next step should be, it made it pretty easy to say, “Maybe they knew something I didn't. Maybe I should look into journalism.”
I'm lucky. There are many struggling novelists out there who have to set their laptops aside and go to work and do other things, whereas I get to go to work and do just what I would be doing if I was at home – working with words and ideas and communication. I'm just communicating something different.
Knowing how lucky I am to get to write for a living doesn't help, though, when my main characters are refusing to co-operate and I can't think of the right words to get them to behave.
But struggling is just part of being a writer, right? It gives my writing character. I hope.
