You Are Not the Problem: For AndiLit

When I was first trying to write regularly twenty years ago, I could not, for the life of me, finish anything.

At the time, I was trying to write fiction. I wrote one story about a husband and wife making a hard decision over the phone. I could hear their voices in my head, imagine the wife crouched in the bedroom, the shame around her neck like a tight, glittering choker, could imagine the husband trying to pretend to be the man he wanted to be.

But after about three pages, I could not imagine anything else. The thread of the idea trailed off into an impenetrable jungle.

And that was a best-case scenario: I had a scene, I had characters, a situation. I was rich. Most of the time, I had only one line of dialogue and no idea who said it; a situation but no people; people, but no voices, or a scene without any idea why it mattered. It was like trying to make a banquet at a campsite with no tools and only scallions and black pepper to work with.

Writers finish stories, I told myself. You can’t call yourself a writer unless you write things. I would sit down to write, and with much effort, stray bits from a creative junk yard would emerge, but I could not MacGyver them into anything intelligible.

This went on for a couple years. It wasn’t pleasant.

Twenty years later, I finish things easily. I pound out a first draft of an essay or blog post or chapter and then later I revisit it. I come to rough drafts like a contractor with a whole team of workers behind her. I reframe whole sections without any hesitation, put up new joists like they’re post-it notes.

Now it’s time for a confession. Sometimes, I hear writers with less experience complain about not being able to finish anything and my first reaction (forgive me) is exasperation.

Stop thinking so much about it and just do the work, I think. I know full well that I would have shriveled up into a little ball if anyone had said that to me twenty years ago. I also know that it’s easy to say DO THE WORK when you have twenty years of experience, and all the necessary tools. I’ve got a lot more than scallions in my pantry right now.

So what is actually useful to say to these struggling writers? Because the truth is, I tortured myself a lot back when I started out, and I would love to save everyone else the mental anguish.

And here is what I would say: It’s not YOU that’s the problem. The problem is the work.

I’m at my friend Andi’s love letter of a blog for writers talking about what the real problem we writers or creative people face every time we sit down to make something new. Join me there!