Have I ever told you that I hate writing?
Probably not. Why would I? I’m a writer; and writers are supposed to have a love for writing that burns with the heat of a thousand suns… Right?
Well, the truth is I don’t love writing. In fact, I don’t even like it.
The act of writing is dry, monotonous, and boring. It promotes isolationism, requires hours of dedication to master, and even if you were to become a master of this slowly dying skill, it’s highly unlikely that you’ll be able to make a career out of it.
For these reasons (among many others) being a writer is one of the most difficult things I could have ever chosen to be. But here’s the important thing to remember: I chose this. Not because I love tortu- I mean writing, but because I’m addicted to what I can do with my writing.
The day I started this blog, I made a decision to stop think that I would be a writer someday, and start considering myself a writer now. (As per the advice of an awesome authors and inspirational writer, Jeff Goins)
This simple change in mindset made a big difference in my writing. I began to work on my projects more consistently and in the first month, I also felt the benefits of insane motivation; after all, if I was going to start considering myself a writer, I might as well act like one. It was an exciting time, not only because my writing was finally starting to take off, but also because I felt like I was an actual, professional writer… Even if I’m not getting paid to do this…
This is what the right mindset can do for you. It can give you motivation, drive, productivity, and it can make you want to work hard, even when you don’t like the work. In my experience, the right mindset is the most powerful tool for a writer to have; but for a start-up writer like me, having the wrong mindset (or an incomplete one, in my case) could end a career before it even takes off.
I wish I could show you an actual graph of my writing output/desire to work over that past few months, but this is a pretty accurate representation.
And then things started to go downhill fast. Over the course of the last couple months, it has been getting harder and harder to force my self to write every day. At one point It got so bad that I actually gave in to my lazy tendencies and took a whole month off (incase you didn’t know, here’s why that’s bad). But when I got back to work on September 1st, I found that nothing had changed. I still didn’t want to write, even though I struggled to be more productive. I used every trick that I knew to get myself writing again, but no matter what I tried, it never got any easier: I just wasn’t motivated.
I heard somewhere, and forgive me but i have no idea where, a very useful saying that goes something like: If you’ve tried everything to solve your problem, and nothing has worked, you’re probably looking at it backwards. Or in other words: get a new perspective.
And so I did. I took a step back and looked at the problem from a different point of view: not as a writer, but as myself. (I asked questions like: why do I write? Do I really enjoy what I’m doing? Why do I want to be a writer anyway?) And what I came to find after answering just a few of these questions was that my problem wasn’t that I was being lazy, I just had an incomplete mindset.
Thinking of myself as a writer wasn’t enough by itself.
After the initial excitement of that first month wore off, my motivation to keep writing dropped to almost zero and my productivity was minimal. The only reason I kept writing was because I knew that if I stopped, I wouldn’t be able to start again. And all of this happened because I was so focused on being a writer that I completely forgot about why I wanted to be a writer in the first place.
I forgot who I was, before I was a writer.
That sounds like a pretty serious problem, doesn’t it? I thought so too; but for me, the solution was surprisingly simple: a book.
These days, the only way I keep myself motivated to write is by always have a good book close at hand. A physical book works best—there’s something magical in the feeling of physically turning the page of a story; but then again, there’s no beating the library of e-books I can have on my iPad. But it really doesn’t matter what the book looks like on the outside, all that matters is that I have easy access to the story on the inside.
But how does keeping a book close by help my writing?
Well, to be honest, it doesn’t. Writing is still difficult and It’s something I’ll always have to work at; but holding that book in my hands and turning the pages experiencing the story that someone else created… Having a book like this around reminds me of why I started writing in the first place. Having a book like this around reminds me of why I chose to be a writer.
This was the missing piece to my incomplete mindset.
There’s no point in thinking of myself as a writer, if I don’t remember why I want to write; there’s no point in knowing why I want to write, if I don’t think of myself as a writer. You can’t have one without the other, and both are necessary to do what I love doing: telling stories.
—~~~:::~~~—
This was a long post, so I understand if you didn’t read the whole thing, but…
If you didn’t read anything else, read this.
Don’t get so caught up in being a writer, that you forget who you are. Instead, figure out why you’re a writer, and then find a way to remind yourself when you forget.