- The Human Connection
- Posts
- How Writing Is Like Climbing A Mountain
Yesterday an appreciative reader, Stephan Pinkwart, commented, “It might be intriguing if, in a future piece, you share insights into the emotional challenges of the writing process.” That set me thinking about how writing is very much an emotional journey, one that begins before you even write the first sentence and lasts a long way past where you write ‘The End.’
One of a writer’s biggest enemies is a blank page or screen. There have been times when I was at my wit's end trying to come up with a story that has two essential elements. One, it has to have legs, and two, it must have some sort of special element called lightning in a bottle, or a rainbow in a jar. I think you will find that both of those elements are in every single successful story ever written, from a 600-word potboiler to War and Peace.
The feelings of desperation can have the effect of putting you off even picking up a pen to make a start.
In the actual writing process, along with desperation, a writer can easily feel a deep sense of frustration and even anger. On the other hand, there are senses of joy, fulfilment and self-satisfaction. To that you can add feelings of vulnerability, to your own inner critic as well as the sometimes unwelcome criticism of your readers. With vulnerability come its ever-present bedfellows, fear and anxiety. Unsurprisingly, it can be something of a battle to get through a story from beginning to end unscarred by the process.
All of the above is especially true for writers such as myself who write from a very deep personal perspective. Pretty much everything I write on Medium, Substack and my own writing platform The Human Connection, not to mention the 28 books I have published on Amazon, have varying degrees of biographical content.
You need to be thick-skinned to put yourself out there with what have been traumatic life events, especially when somebody decides to make unfair accusations about what you had to live through (I had one of those this week). The one piece of advice I can give you about that is to remember that what people say about you says nothing about who and what you really are and a darn sight more about them. More often than not, accusations are confessions.
One more thing to take note of in these days of some people far too easily taking offence is that whatever you write may inadvertently trigger a bad reaction among the readership. Somebody wiser than I once said, if you have never upset anybody it means you have never had the balls to stand for something. Whatever.
So, with that gamut of emotions in play, what can you do? Well, you certainly cannot avoid the matter, unless you stop writing. Control is key. Do not allow fear to control what you say or do, you control the fear.
Has there ever been a time when I broke down? Yes, very much so. One of my first books, The Island, involved the description of the murder of a young child by a monster who had done a deal with evil spirits to deliver innocent souls to them. What made it all so touching was I chose to let the murdered child’s ghost tell the story through a process of what you might call supernatural telepathy.
The child went to pass a teddy bear to her listener. For a brief moment, as she and the young boy both had a hand on the teddy bear, she ran a replay of what happened in her ghost mind which found its way into the boy's living mind. The boy began to cry out of a deep sense of sadness… Ha, I am beginning to tear up just telling you this. For sure, this is all part of catharsis, it certainly feels like it.
Such was the power of the words I wrote, I wept buckets for all of the children in the world who become victims of life’s monsters. I empathise a great deal because I too had to face murderous monsters in my childhood (a younger brother tried to kill me twice) and in my adult life with all manner of serious assaults I would rather not go into detail about here. The important thing is that I survived and most of my assailants are long since dead.
These are just some of the emotional challenges I have had to confront in life and in writing alike. My last words on the matter are that writing is one of the biggest challenges you can embark upon. All you can do is write with all of your heart without losing your head.
The End
I have what is called an affiliate link to Beehiiv, for which I may receive a small commission, at no cost to anybody who joins that great open-source website creative platform. On the contrary, if you join via the link below, you will receive a 20% discount for the first three months of any paid plan you decide to take out.
As an accomplished singer-songwriter, you may be interested to hear and even buy two of my albums, just $5 each, out now on Bandcamp. Both albums were professionally recorded and feature musicians like the American guitar virtuoso and Bon Jovi Producer, Mr Lance Quinn Just click on the link below.
Reply