The pain of writing, the joy of having written

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

The process of writing something usually starts before I sit down to write. It all hinges on my opening line, my opening paragraph. Years ago, in my first magazine editor’s job, I spent two weeks thinking about the opening line following an interview with a famous football player.

Once I have that, the puzzle pieces often fall into place, usually painfully. I have often called writing ‘squeezing water from a stone’ and, for a while, lived by the quote attributed to Dorothy Parker, “I hate writing, I love having written.”

Hate is a strong word but I do like ‘having written’, even though, more often than not, once whatever I have written is done and has been submitted, I never read it again. And, having worked for magazines and clients where deadlines are usually tight, I got over any ‘perfection’ issues I may have had before that.

Yet, with my own writing, I find it difficult to actually just start. I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about what I am going to write instead of actually writing. In a way I need the constraint of a deadline to actually get started and, I must confess, I am a most productive writer when on the edge of a deadline.

I spent close to a decade thinking about writing a book, which eventually became Listen To Your Footsteps. I spent half that time reading books about writing On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King, The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr and Bird By Bird: Some Instructions on Writing & Life by Anne Lamott instead of actually writing.

Side Note: Currently listening to the episode of Tetragrammaton by Rick Rubin with Anne Lamott & Neal Allen (her husband) and have added their book Good Writing: 36 Ways To Improve Your Sentences to my to-read list.

It has been 5 years since Listen To Your Footsteps was published. I wrote most of it over a six months period during COVID-19 lockdown - because I had a deadline.

In the month after it was published, I was gung ho about starting on another book. Six months later, I had decided that I would never write a book again, even though I had ideas for at least three books. A year ago, I decided that maybe I will write another one. And have found myself, once again, in the throes of procrastination and a form of ‘analysis-paralysis’, especially because, this time around, I have decided to write a full manuscript before actually exploring publishing.

I know that the best way to start is to actually start. To show up, put my butt in the seat and just write but, every time I do that, something ‘more important’ crops up. I know that the first objective is to produce a first draft, no matter how ‘bad’ it is.

I recently contributed an essay to an anthology being published in the next few months and I took this approach. I put down all my thoughts without worrying about whether the writing was good and the thoughts were coherent. I then spent two weeks going back over it every other day, editing and rewriting. Yet when it comes to this damn book project … I keep running away, even though I have found the formula.

And the self-doubts bubbling beneath the surface don’t help. There are so many great books out there, why bother with adding to that cacophony with something that won’t be as ‘good’.

I keep waiting for the thing that will push me to start. Perhaps writing these words here will be the thing.