The anticipation of the thing is almost always worse than the thing itself.
This is what it feels like to write a book.
I often find myself paralyzed by the sheer weight of what I want to write. My novels feel so important to me, so impossibly large and fundamental, that most days I can’t muster the courage to face my own characters. Silly, I know.
But recently, I found the courage again. It was late in the evening, and I grabbed my laptop and slipped into bed with a glass of wine. Surprisingly, diving back into my book felt…easy. Exciting. Like I was returning home to myself. Nothing like the dreadful, massive lift I had convinced myself it was during weeks of not writing.
“Resistance,” Steven Pressfield writes in The War of Art, “will tell you anything to keep you from doing your work. … If you take Resistance at its word, you deserve everything you get. Resistance is always lying and always full of sh*t.”
I've now developed a serious mindset shift when it comes to writing books. No more paralyzing fear. No more soul-sucking procrastination. No more rationalizing excuses.
After many conversations with friends, Steven Pressfield prompts, and middle-of-the-night revelations of my own, here are three things I’m learning about how to write a book – the right way.
Stop telling yourself writing a book is hard. Writing a book is fun.
Of course it’s hard. The best things in life always are, like nurturing a healthy marriage or getting (and staying) fit. But you can also have a heck of a good time while you’re doing it. And isn’t that the point?
So often, we talk of “creative burnout” – the heaviest of burdens for an artist. But we forget what a blessing it is to even get to that point. I always imagine explaining this phenomenon to the little girl version of myself: “So, yeah, basically, I spend so much of my time writing that sometimes I can’t stomach writing anymore.”
She always looks back at me with an elated grin. “You get to write that much? That sounds amazing. Maybe you should take a little break, and then get back to it.”
Stop writing for other people. Write for yourself.
It’s difficult to come to the page without predetermined thoughts of:
Am I writing something that’s going to sell?
Am I writing something that people are going to rave to their friends about?
Am I writing something that a literary agent will spill her coffee over as she fumbles to grab her phone and call her intern, urging, ‘Get this lady on the phone right now’?”
These thoughts are a slow death for the creation process. They’re overwhelming and confusing, stopping up flow states like a shower drain. The actual writing of the book needs to happen unencumbered, in a locked room with soundproof walls and an emotional support drink available at all times.
Before you have something that’s malleable and full of potential, you need to suck it up and just create the thing. Write it like no one will ever read it. That’s when the good stuff emerges.
Stop writing from fear. Write from a place of love.
A writer friend of mine once brought this to my attention — that I was approaching the page with fear.
“Try writing from a place of love, instead,” he said. “Write like you’re telling a story to someone you really love. Convey every little detail. Don’t leave anything out.”
This is, without a doubt, the best writing advice I’ve ever received.
It’s tempting to get caught up in the intricacies of writing a book — in plot lines and character arcs and marketing tactics — but the straight and narrow path is simply telling a story you love, to people you love, in a way that you love. La fin.
I never imagined the reader on the other side as a recipient of my loving care characterized by grueling hours of writing and editing - that’s an eye-opening perspective. Now I can just imagine a child with wide open eyes listening to me read my stories, warming them like a fire. A good motivator, no? Thanks a million!
“Write from a place of love”. So good, Grace.
It shouldn’t, but it always surprises me how complex intricacies always boil down to clear simplicities.
I couldn’t have more confidence your book will be excellent. Sign me up for a copy (or 10?) :)