I love writing. It’s such an amazing thing in every way. I mean, you get to create a world for people to explore and fall in love with; you can come with articulate and well-written articles, guides, listicles, and whatever else to help people in all fields of life; and you can also concoct amazingly written bodies of work of different types, and on any subject. However, has with anything else, writing and being a writer comes with loads of struggles.
In this article, I will be sharing several struggles that come with being a writer – both common ones, and ones that I face myself. Here goes:
Coming up with amazing ideas at the wrong time: This has happened to me more times than I can count. It’s one of the biggest struggles many writers face. You can’t time your brain and mind to just churn ideas whenever you’re seated and prepared with your pen and paper or keyboard, so your best ideas might pop up when you’re about to sleep, having your bath, inside a bus, or in any other trickysituation. I have so many random books in my house filled with articles, short write ups, and poems because they were the closest thing to me when I had the ideas. Some other ideas just floated away, and I can’t even recollect them.
Having people belittle what you do: This happens in several different ways. For one, many people don’t acknowledge writing as an actual profession or a real thing if you’re not a published author making millions per year. Other times, people keep saying how easy writing is and how anybody can do it, so writers should stop being on such a high horse. Well, news flash – writing is not easy and no, not everybody can do it. Writing as a profession or as a hobby/passion is not the same thing as writing to string words together or having the ability to put pen on paper.
Writer’s Block: Apparently some people believe writer’s block is something that happens to old people – it’s not. For the most part of 2018, I had writer’s block (you can tell from the lack of posts on my blog for months at a time). At the same time, I was working as a freelance writer and submitting top notch articles every other week. The difference? For my blog, I had to come up with original ideas, topics, and content. As a freelance writer, I’m given the idea I’m supposed to work with (what the client wants), and most times, given a topic, so I knew what I had to submit. Having writer’s block was terrible for me because it meant leaving my blog unattended and I felt bad about myself for the total idea drought.
Doubting yourself at every turn: One of the things I face and fight with most as a writer is second guessing myself a lot. I get an idea – “is it good enough?” “will anyone even click to read this?”. I start writing the draft for a post, then stop halfway because I feel I’m writing rubbish. Then when I finally finish writing it, I read over it and I feel it’s absolute trash so I just press Ctrl+A and backspace. It’s horrible, trust me.
Sharing too much: Of course, this doesn’t happen when you’re writing subject articles, or something streamlined to a particular non-personal topic. But when it’s time to write personal stuff, oversharing becomes a huge problem. I’ve had to change names on many posts, or leave lots of stuff out because 1) I don’t know if I’m comfortable with people knowing that much about me and 2) I don’t know if the people I’m writing about will be okay with having their names or stuff about them out there like that.
Starting to write about one thing, then totally drifting to another: LMAO should I start counting how many of my posts this has happened with? It happens a lot with me, when I start to write about one topic, then fixate on another thing in the opening lines, and start expatiating on that instead, and then having to change the topic to center on that. LMAO do you get?
Feeling like all your ideas are unoriginal: People have been writing for centuries, and basically every basic plot on the planet has been written about in one way or the other. As a result of this, it’s not uncommon to feel, as a writer, that all your huge and “breakthrough” ideas are unoriginal, and they all belong to someone else. This can cause a bit of a rot, or even make your job as a writer harder because you must keep looking for new ways to twist and turn the story, poem, or article so you’re not seen as a plagiarizer or copycat.
The list is still long, but I don’t want to be a Debbie Downer, because being a writer has twice as many joys as it does struggles. I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember, and it has been one of the most amazing things about my life.
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