One day back in the 90s, I was writing late into the night, when I looked up to see my reflection in the window. It was not a pretty sight. My lips were pressed grimly together. My jaw was hard. My forehead was creased. I looked worse than tired and stressed: I looked miserable.
It was only when I saw that reflection that I realized to my horror that I was miserable. I was struggling with the essay I was writing. I was disappointed over recent rejections. I was worried about money. And I was terrified my writing career was never going to go anywhere.
If writing isn’t bringing me joy, I asked myself, why am I doing it? It was a dilemma. I knew I wasn’t going to stop writing, and yet I didn’t want to continue with work that left me depleted.
That was the day I started doing some serious thinking about how to bring joy into my writing life. From that point on, I started focusing on making writing pleasurable. As a result, I am a completely different kind of writer now than I was back then. I can’t say I never feel frustrated or anxious when I write—but most of the time, I’m loving every minute of it.
Today, I’d like to share one of the most important things I learned during the time I was transforming my writing life. Although I have taken many steps to ensure that writing remains a joyful experience for me, this is one of the most important: I stopped counting.
How many times have you heard a writer say, “My novel has been rejected by 9 (or 45 or 206) publishers”? Counting rejections almost seems to be a pasttime among writers. I’ve known writers who checked off each rejection in a ledger and even a few who kept elaborate charts of their rejections.Obviously, knowing how many rejections you’ve already had doesn’t make an acceptance any likelier. It doesn’t help our writing process. It doesn’t help us hone our skill. Mainly, it just makes us unhappy.
But rejections aren’t the only things writers count. We’re also big on counting:
- The amount of money we make (or don’t make) on our writing.
- The amount of money other writers are making.
- The hours, days, and years we spend writing, (“It took me seven years to finish my novel.”)
- The amount of time we have to write. (“I only have an hour after the kids go to sleep.”)
- The sales of our books (my publisher has a website where I can check every week to see how many titles I’ve sold).
- Our Amazon sales rank.
- The number of “likes” on our Facebook author’s page.
- The number of views our blog is getting.
I’ve even known a few relatively successful writers who figure out the amount they made per hour on their novels (It’s always something like a penny an hour).
If you’re raking in the dough with a book that is flying off the shelves, counting might be fine. I suppose counting the number of weeks your book has been on the New York Times bestsellers list doesn’t feel too bad.
But, for most of us, counting does no good and much harm. It forces us to focus on supposed failures. It makes us measure ourselves against some imaginary standard of success. It contributes to whatever frustrations or disappointments we may be experiencing.
What is worse is that counting—whether its rejections, money, pages, or time—makes us think that’s what writing is all about. As all serious writers known in their heart of hearts, writing is far, far more than the number of words we put down on the page or the amount of money we get paid for it.
My advice to anyone who tends to get a bit obsessed with numbers is to simply stop. Once I gave up counting, the pressure on my writing immediately eased. Over time, I returned to the real reason I was writing, which had nothing to do with numbers and everything to do with love.