It's not that easy, being a writer.
Sometimes, you just want to face-plant your goddamn laptop.
I've had a frustrating couple of weeks, writer-ness-wise.
A writer is not replaceable — each voice is their own.
A writer is not tameable — each is wild, each answers the call the way that they must.
A writer is not something definable, not something that an algorithm can create, not someone who can be easily pushed aside, not a simple money-making cog, not someone who exists to generate a profit for Capitalism’s insatiable beast.
A writer is someone you pay — art is not a disposable item; writers need to eat.
[Warning: this post discusses mental health problems and grief]
Look, I've been through some stuff lately, and it's definitely affected me.
My mental health has not been good for the last 10+ years, and now, after losing my mother in February... my head has given me a whole bunch of Very Bad Days lately.
I can't bring myself to go into details, but... it was hell. As a family, we've been through absolute hell since October 2024.
Every now and then, out there on the Interwebs, I come across someone who disapproves of the 'romanticisation' of writing.
To them, writing is a career, a job, an occupation. Maybe they enjoy it, maybe they're good at it, but there's no fire in them that compels them to write.
Warning: brief discussions of Anxiety/mental health issues
This is a reminder to any of you fellow writers/bloggers/whoever-s out there who need it:
You don't have to post everything.
You don't have to publish everything.
Warning: this post discusses Depression
I have not had a good week, mental-health-wise.
I had some very bad Depression days, and was generally not very good, mentally.
The thing is that when my mental health is poor, I really struggle to write.
Anything. Like, coherent sentences are a problem.
Let alone the *Writing* I really need (I explained the difference between writing and *Writing* here, if you're interested.)
Can someone tell me how to assess your own writing?
Because I am not good at judging the quality of the stuff I write!
In my head, there's a difference between writing and *Writing.*
Like, I'm one of those people who thinks that all writing is writing, and I will take that to whatever bank and/or government authority you want me to.
I mean it - I will back you up 100%. All writing is writing.
All writing is writing.
Writing this blogpost is writing. Writing a tweet is writing. Writing a to-do list is writing.
It's all physically (or digitally in some cases, I guess,) writing.
And all of it works on your skills with words - don't ever let anyone tell you different, m'k? Gatekeepers can get all the way in the bin. *nods sagely*
Warning: brief references to Depression and Anxiety
A lot of the time, when I write, it's not so much a choice as an exorcism.
(Metaphorically, ofc 😅 )
Don't get me wrong - I love writing.
But sometimes it's the case that, if I don't do it, these words are gonna rattle around my head and drive me to distraction.
Not necessarily in a bad way. It's just... they gotta come out, y'know?
Blogging takes a lot of time and work.
I don't wanna be one of those 'poor me, blogging is so difficult' bloggers, because at the end of the day, if I didn't love it, I could find plenty of other ways to spend my time.
But bloggers do a whole lot more than you might think.
'Well I wanted something better manI wished for something new
And I wanted something beautiful
And wish for something true'
- The Foo Fighters, Wheels
You know when you're trying to write something specific, but things just won't quite click?
Like, the thing you're trying to say refuses to come together - you might get close, but you won't get there. You can't quite manage to get the concept across, to communicate what it is you're trying to communicate.
Like... you can feel the thing, lurking in a corner of your brain, trying to free itself. But it just can't quite make that leap.
...That's one of the most irritating feelings you can have when writing.
Or at least, that's what it feels like to me.
There's a special kind of frustration - as a writer - when the words WON'T GO WHERE THEY'RE SUPPOSED TO!
I'm used to an existential crisis or two in my life. I usually have at least one a week.
(And the more naive among you probably think I'm joking, or exaggerating in some way. *laughs in hysterical Queer millennial*)
But one of the few things I've never doubted is my purpose - reading, and writing.
...But whether to fulfil that purpose?
What fulfilling that purpose looks like? Whether that purpose means anything, in the grand scheme of things? Whether I'm destined to fail in that purpose? Why this is my purpose? Whether we are all doomed to meaninglessness in a universe that dissolves into entropy, and if that is the case, then whether writing some silly little poems or stories is actually worth anything...
...OK. I think you get the gist.
My work-in-progress (WIP) looks nothing like it used to.
I started These Ghosts of Ours - which I hesitantly call a novel - an embarrasingly long time ago, as a teenager.
I've actually probably been working on it for half my life at this point, although I've had massive breaks of years when I didn't do anything on it at all because my life was imploding in various ways, shapes, and forms. 😅
(If I'm lucky I may finish These Ghosts of Ours by the time I'm 100! Woo!)
I've been writing a lot of poetry lately -
(mainly over on Medium, but don't worry - it all gets cross-posted here on Dora Reads eventually, I promise!)
- And it led to me thinking (as I do,) about the Point of View (POV) in poetry.
See, the 'I' in poetry is called the 'speaker' - because that's the person who's speaking.
But the speaker is not always the same as the poet.
When I tell people about my various craft projects - weaving, embroidery, cross-stitch - they're always like: 'You must have so much patience!'
But here's the thing - I don't.
I am so impatient. I want things done yesterday, preferrably in triplicate and wrapped with a bow.
No, I don't have any patience...
What I have is the ability to see the progress of the piece - however slow that progress may be.
Seeing it creeping into a mode of 'becoming' lets you know you're on the right track.
You're the only one of you.
( *Starts mentally singing ME! by Taylor Swift and Brendon Urie: 'I'm the only one of me! Baby, that's the fun of me!...'* Lol.)
Hooman-bean-brains are one of the most complex things in the known universe (I know, right? We're special!) and yours is just that: yours.
No-one else's brain will ever work in exactly the same way as yours does.
We may come to the same conclusions or think along the same lines as someone else - but at the end of the day our brains are ours alone: entirely unique.
Wanna see how far you can run? Wanna train to run a marathon or a 5k or whatever it is running-people do?
Find a tree.
