8 Secrets Writers Won't Tell You

Whenever I look at published writers, I see someone who is nothing like myself. They have written wonderful books (and finished them!), they have blogs that hundreds of people read and care about. And I have half written, half abandoned novels in the making that have so many mistakes and need too many revisions that I don't think I'll EVER publish a book. However, taking a look at other aspiring authors (like yourselves) I find that I'm actually not alone, and real life authors out there go through the same struggles as you and me. The following eight secrets are some we ALL know, we just won't admit out loud (and lets face it, I'm only admitting these in writing anyways.)

1. Writing is Hard:
"Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead." ---Gene Fowler

There is a myth (not just in the writing world) that if you're good at something, it's easy. Don't get me wrong, there are times when I can sit down and write something wonderful. (This usually lasts around 4 days and in random bursts for me, however I have heard of people who have much longer writing sessions...and others with much shorter ones.) Truth is, that writing is HARD. Some types of writing are harder than others; but almost any type of writing will cause resistance. Getting started is never easy (although, it is my favourite part :D) and very few writers can turn up a great first draft.

2. We All Struggle With Procrastination:
It's true, just like everyone else procrastinates with school work, homework, work in general; writer's procrastinate. In fact, writer's procrastinate on writing like there's no tomorrow.

Procrastination can come in a few different forms:
- You do the dishes, weed the garden, tidy your desk, sharpen your pencils … ANYTHING but sit down and put words on a page.
- You write, regularly – perhaps blog posts or journal entries – but you never get round to starting that novel or memoir or other big, meaningful project. (Which is actually what I'm currently doing).

The first one is fairly harmless (or at least I think so). You can easily spot yourself doing it and tell yourself to stop weeding the garden and get to work. It's the second one that's pesky. It's easy to kid yourself that you're just not ready to tackle that big project yet, even if you've been putting it off for weeks, months, even years. (Like I said, I'm doing it now, although I've only been procrastinating for a few days. I'm calling this a "Break")

3. We Put Ourselves Into Our Work:
God. I do this way more than I should and I always scold other authors for doing it (but mostly because they do it NOTICEABLY, while I go the more inconspicuous route).

Anything (and everything) you write says a little something about you as a person, whether you want it to or not. Even your choice of what to write says something about you. You've chosen to put that title on the project with those words in that order. You've decided that something is important enough to put down in words.

It doesn't stop there. There are writers that deliberately draw on their own lives. I myself find it difficult to write about things that I've never experienced before. I tend to put little aspects of myself (although intensified) into a character I'm writing, or add in a childhood memory to the mix. This is actually a good writing skill to have, as long as it's subtle. What I don't like is when someone writes scene by scene something that has happened to them, only with different names. Little bits are good. Not your whole life.

4. First Drafts are Always Crap:
Short stories or straightforward pieces might come out just about right the first time. It's the lengthy novels that look completely different from the first draft in the end. I freely admit that my first drafts look and sound a lot like what point form lecture notes might look like. I go back and add in the fluff EVERY TIME.

As a reader, you only get to see the final draft. You don't have access to the fumbling, faulty first draft that every author has to go through in order to produce their brilliant masterpiece. But those first drafts exist whether in the memory of the author, burned, buried in a desk (or in the backyard). They exist. Concealed from the world.

5. Each Piece Exists in A State of "Flux"--And it's Never "Finished":
When you read anything, you can't imagine it being any different than what it is now. It seems fixed in its place. Rooted to it's perfection. That, however, is not how the writer of the work sees it. Chances are, that piece of work started as a patchwork of ideas to the author. Whole chunks--chapters, scenes, paragraphs characters-- will have been moved around, expanded...CUT. There was probably even a coin-toss decision with the author on which direction to take. It is because of this that a piece of work never feels finished to its author. There is ALWAYS the potential for some tweaking. However, at some point you have to let a piece of work go.

6. We Do It Because We're Obsessed:
Normal people aren't writers. There. it's been admitted. Most people (much to my utter horror) actually don't like to write. Most people don't feel the need to sit down and put their thoughts on paper. In fact, most people don't feel the need to sit down and read a book, let alone obtain a whole personal library of them (Mines at around 250).

If you're writing, then you have some sort of obsession. Some writers talk about their need to write and how they couldn't live without it. I myself can't imagine myself in a life where I didn't write at all.

7. Money Does Matter:
While there are many authors who carry on writing because they are, in fact, obsessed, there are very few of us who haven't had some ideas about making money from it. After all, if you can make money from your writing, then you can spend your work day working with words; not just your evenings and weekends!

There is no shame in making money from your writing.

8. We All Struggle With Self-Doubt:
You will come across the occasional supremely confident writer. In my experience, those people tend not to be very successful (or very good--there are exceptions). It is the good writers that are riddled with self-doubt and as they are getting better and better, they are better able to spot the flaws in their work. The good news is you're getting better. The bad news is, you see how crappy you were to begin with.

Sunny-Lee <3