The Only Way to Have Written Is to Write

And other horrors of the writing life.

I have the same relationship with writing that I have with running. I love it and hate it at the same time.

Running is hard, time-consuming, and just challenging enough that sometimes even I wonder why I do it. To be honest, I don’t pop awake eager to run ten miles. Most days, I’d rather drink coffee in bed.

And yet there’s no denying how amazing it feels—not necessarily to run but to have run.

That’s the same way I feel about writing.

I don’t so much enjoy writing as I enjoy the results of having written.

For me, this is one of the primary horrors of the writing life.

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There are myriads of reasons why writing is so hard. Everything takes forever; pitching and publishing is fraught with peril; not to mention that at nearly every point in the process, it’s hard for me to tell if I’m doing a good job.

But for me, the hardest part is the basic reality of the writing process. Simply putting my thoughts on paper means I have to know what my thoughts are.

And that’s not as easy as it sounds.

As we move through our days, we rarely think in words. In general, our thoughts pass through our minds as a series of interconnected impressions, images, questions, concerns, and emotions.

In the mornings, we stand barefoot in the kitchen, sipping coffee and staring out through the foggy windowpane, thinking our thoughts and feeling our feelings. There’s definitely mental labor being exerted; and yet, if asked what we’re thinking, we’re often hard-pressed to articulate what’s passing through our minds.

“Oh, nothing,” we’ll say, though rarely is that the case. It’s just that it’s hard, in the moment, to differentiate our thoughts—even to ourselves—let alone express them to others.

And the deeper the thought, the harder it is to articulate.

“I know what I want to say—I just don’t know how to say it.” How often have sentiments like these passed our lips?

Yet that’s the very job of the writer. To take the liquid thoughts swirling soupily in our brains and pour them onto the page without making a complete mess.

Then, for me, comes the real horror.

The only real way to know if what I’ve written works is to let someone else read it.

Let someone read my words before I’m sure they work.

Which, put like that, leaves me wondering why I do this.

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As you may have already surmised, my current feelings toward my writing life are complicated.

And yet here I am. Writing about them.

Like a chump.

Because that’s what I do.

It’s what all writers do. We write—despite the horrors. Perhaps even because of them.

So here I sit, holed up in the public library, settling in for another day fighting the good fight.

Immediately after I hit post on this essay, I’ll pull a sheaf of papers from my bag, uncap my pen, and set about revising a longform fiction project.

Because the only path to the fun part of the process—the version of the future in which I have written—is to buckle down today and write.

(Meme Credit: Aria Carter, Facebook)

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Interested in checking out some of the things I already have written?

A few of my early audiobooks are now available for streaming on Spotify; and if you have Spotify Premium, you’re allotted 15 hours of book-listening hours per month.

Doing the math, you wouldn’t quite make it through the entire Rachel Cooper Trilogy in a single month, but you could definitely stream the first two books back-to-back.

To stream my books on Spotify:

If you have Spotify Premium, click the search bar, toggle over to the audiobook tab, and search for my name (Ruth Buchanan) to find these titles:

Collapsible (5hr 35 mins)

Flexible (6 hrs 10 mins)

Unbreakable (6 hrs 11 mins)

Enjoy!

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