Jeffrey K. Walker
Curiously, I blogged about this recently. Here's the link: bit.ly/2rlLtAU
I'm going to use a little of that blog post here.
I must be a terrible writer. Seems to me writers as a tribe spend a lot of time whingeing and sighing about how tortured we are. (And obsessing about adverbs, which is kind of weird when you think about it.) It’s all “Oh! I didn't make my word count!” and “Don’t you understand how I suffer for my art!” What makes me a terrible writer, I’m fairly certain, is that far from being tortured, I feel kind of privileged to be writing every day. I came to fiction writing later than most. I say fiction because I’ve been writing for a living most of my adult life. I’m a lawyer—about 75% of what we call work is mostly writing. Come to think if it, many of my former opposing counsel might claim I've been writing fiction for quite some time. But I digress.
Because I started in with serious (non-courtroom) storytelling 35 years after graduating from college, I began with much more self-discipline and far better organizational chops than I would have earlier in life. Yes, I sweat my word count, but I’m such an obsessive planner and outliner that I really don't have any idea what ‘writer’s block’ means. I always know what the next scene is going to be and what objectives I have to achieve within it. So getting the words down on paper isn’t all that torturous. More like tedious some days, but not that many. Therefore, it’s a fair critique to say that I might suck at writing. It’s unfair to say I’m not efficient at writing.
I'm going to use a little of that blog post here.
I must be a terrible writer. Seems to me writers as a tribe spend a lot of time whingeing and sighing about how tortured we are. (And obsessing about adverbs, which is kind of weird when you think about it.) It’s all “Oh! I didn't make my word count!” and “Don’t you understand how I suffer for my art!” What makes me a terrible writer, I’m fairly certain, is that far from being tortured, I feel kind of privileged to be writing every day. I came to fiction writing later than most. I say fiction because I’ve been writing for a living most of my adult life. I’m a lawyer—about 75% of what we call work is mostly writing. Come to think if it, many of my former opposing counsel might claim I've been writing fiction for quite some time. But I digress.
Because I started in with serious (non-courtroom) storytelling 35 years after graduating from college, I began with much more self-discipline and far better organizational chops than I would have earlier in life. Yes, I sweat my word count, but I’m such an obsessive planner and outliner that I really don't have any idea what ‘writer’s block’ means. I always know what the next scene is going to be and what objectives I have to achieve within it. So getting the words down on paper isn’t all that torturous. More like tedious some days, but not that many. Therefore, it’s a fair critique to say that I might suck at writing. It’s unfair to say I’m not efficient at writing.
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