Writing As a Battle- Or Not

We’ve all been through times when it feels that writing is a battle.

 

In all honesty, it’s not a battle to get the words on paper, or computer, it’s something that is sticking in your mind that is making you feel that whatever you’re doing is a battle.  You don’t have enough time.  It’s family commitments.  It’s a holiday.  The computer decided to have a meltdown.  It’s just too hard.  You hate writing.  You hate your blog.  You are always being asked to do something.  There’s always a crisis so you can’t work.  It’s the editing, not the writing. It’s the writing, not the editing.  The one too many ‘yeses’ you’ve done recently.  The kids are sick.  Someone in the family is sick.  Friends need you.  Yes, it’s a battle, and you are fighting for time and effort and energy, and it’s just impossible.

 

I get it, I’ve been there, and it’s not fun, and, if I’m honest, I will say I’ve used every single one of them.  If that’s the case, what makes me the expert on feeling that you’re battling your own writing?  I can understand, even maybe sympathize with the reasons we have to find it hard to write, but it all boils down to just sitting down and writing.  I believe, the best reason is also the best excuse, and while I didn’t write or blog or do much for nearly a year, not even work on the long promised youtube channel, and I learned a lot about myself as a writer, and in my moment of failure, as how I can be as a person too.  Especially when the chips are down, and I’m not sure how to fix it.

 

It can be a slow process where I wondered why I would even want to write again.  I couldn’t find the time, but honestly, I was too lazy to actually sit down for ten minutes and write even 100 words.  Let’s be honest: how pathetic is that?  I know it is because that’s not even a blog post.  It’s an excuse for me to become more lazy- and while I was “thinking about my life as a writer ect, ect ect,” I was really chowing down on chips in front of the TV watching the latest whatever TV series I was watching- which is worse because half the time I can’t even recall the series I was viewing.  Not only was I losing the battle for my writing, my passion was low, and I was gaining weight and feeling particularly miserable.

 

So why change if it’s easier to not trying to get back to work?

 

Because, simply put, I was comfortable with breaking every promise I could conceive of.  I wanted a way out.  Not from writing but rather, from the whole challenge of how I could do my writing, build my blog, and youtube, and generally not be a jerk about it.  I was looking for the one excuse I could use that would not tick off, annoy, hurt, infuriate, or generally do anything negative but still get away with nothing.  My life was suffering, although to many people it appeared I was “moving on” becoming “successful” because I found a 9-5 job, which, given the great people I worked with was fun.  the trouble was as much as working was fun- and it was- I was still being the person whose level of lazy-butt-do-it-as-easy-as-I-can work ethic, meant that I coasted.  It was a grey sort of life.  I was wanting out or, at the least a way to make it better.

 

On a consistent basis, I was being the person I didn’t want to be, and in a course of a few months, I became the habitual compromise person.  If there was any doubt in my mind that writing was a battle, I was the first to take it, because the writing was too hard and it was easier to just keep doing what I was doing.  Except I was doing nothing at all.

 

What changed?

 

For one thing, I thought about my writing, and realized how many excuses I was using to get out of it, and that what I was saying (I want to write) wasn’t what I was doing.  I understood that I was the reason, I was having so much trouble writing.  It wasn’t the blog, it wasn’t the topic, it was me.  The person who was looking for reasons to not get back and the person I was becoming wasn’t happy.  How did I fix this?

 

Baby steps.  I decided one battle at a time, a blog post a month.  Then two blog posts every month.  If that didn’t work forgive myself and move forward.  A YouTube video, maybe, but in the grand scheme of things, it was just baby steps.  To not lose the battle, and to be better it simply means that I am working at my own pace, and know I can become much more.