Writing The Worst Stuff Ever

Huge sigh

I love writing for many reasons, a major one being because it’s fun. But so far, being a writer is not always the most fun. It’s difficult to get up early and stick to my writing schedule, when my best ideas arrive at the cusp of falling asleep (where were they hiding all day?!). Writing is also one of the most solitary activities in existence. I can’t write “with” someone (although, I guess we could sit in the same room silently for hours). I can’t watch a show while writing, or listen to a podcast while writing, or go on a walk while writing. I have to be sitting down and focused, with no distractions from anyone or anything. Goodbye to my already sparse social life.

But I think the hardest part about being a writer is the fact that I both love the craft and hate my work. More often than not, I produce The Worst Stuff Ever. Reading back pages of cringy stuff that I came up with using my brain can get discouraging. Sometimes it paralyzes me in front of a blank page, because I’m afraid that the next string of words I emit will be as mediocre as the last.

My professor told me that as a writer, you have to write a lot of crap. (He didn’t use the word crap, but this is a family-friendly channel.) Just piles and piles of crap. That’s what it takes. But don’t worry that it’s crap — just keep writing and learning.

I submitted some crap to him recently, and although he reviewed it and gave it back to me with some encouraging words, I still see it as a piece of crap that I squeezed out right before the deadline (because I was mentally paralyzed the whole week). But, I did learn that I don’t do a very good job expanding on my descriptions. I feel like I used to be a lot better at that. And, he also picked my brain on what the climatic scene could be, who the characters are, how they see themselves, how they see the world, what piece of repeated imagery could become symbolic, etc. Then he said he wanted me to flesh it out into a full short-story.

I’m not confident that I can turn a mere 400 words (that I’m not really excited about) into at least 2,000 words of decent writing. But at least I know what questions to ask and what to work on for future iterations, thanks to this Worst Stuff Ever. That’s really the whole philosophy behind needing to writing piles of crap. It’s not that I’ll luckily write something good after trying a hundred times; it’s that I’ll learn something with each story, and move closer to writing something I can be proud of.