3 Lies Writers Tell Ourselves

Time to tell the truth…

Liar, Liar, pants on fire!

3 Lies Writers Tell Themselves

1. I don’t care what anyone thinks of my writing

If this were true, you would never, ever share your work. It would stay locked up in a drawer somewhere, hidden from all the world. Or better yet, you would destroy each thing after you had written it because you would never want it to fall into someone else’s hands. We all write for someone else, even if that someone else is an ideal reader who lives in our heads. We are still thinking how that reader would react, what he or she would think about a certain sentence, a particular passage, a specific character. We may write our first draft for ourselves, but anything after that, we have an audience in mind.  And, we CARE what that audience thinks.

2. Writing is fun

There’s a word for you if writing is “fun” – and it’s a bad one. Brainstorming may be fun; drafting may be fun; editing, okay, if that’s your thing; revision – again, we all hear different drummers sometimes. But, if you think the whole writing process, the whole journey of taking a seed that’s been planted in your brain from seedling to fruition, through the struggles to produce your best work, to ensure you have something to say in the best way YOU can say it, if all that is fun, then yes, I am saying that there are some bad words that apply to you.

3. Writing is my hobby

No it isn’t. Not really. Doodling is a hobby. Hiking, perusing Pinterest, bird watching – those things can be hobbies. But writing, if you really are writing, that’s not a hobby. It’s in you. It drives you. If you never sell a book, if you never get a positive review, you will still write. If you think every single word that comes from your brain to the blank page is drivel, you will still write. That’s not a hobby. That’s an obsession.