Not Enjoying Writing? So What? Write Anyway

I recently went through a spell of thinking that I should be getting more enjoyment out of writing and that there was something slightly wrong with me because I wasn’t. Writing runs the gamut for me. It can be laugh-out-loud wonderful, but it can also be cheerless and difficult, and sometimes goes all the way down to please-someone-just-help-me-stop miserable.

I kept thinking that I should be having a marvelous time writing, and yet I wasn’t. I wrote, I always write. But I just couldn’t drum up very much joy. So I was feeling bad over not feeling good, and even my awareness of the irony in that didn’t help me feel better.

Not to place blame or anything, but this whole thing was Ray Bradbury’s fault. In Zen in the Art of Writing, Bradbury says that if you’re writing “without zest, without gusto, without love, without fun, you are only half a writer.” I love Bradbury to death, but I find this quote troubling because it puts me somewhere between 1/7th and 3/8ths a writer. All that gusto and zest that seemed to come naturally to Bradbury, don’t come so easily to me.

After a few weeks of wondering why I’m not radiant with joy every time I write, I recently went gallivanting around the Internet looking to see what other writers had said about writing and pleasure. What I found was an enormous relief.

In 2009, The Guardian asked nine authors whether they found writing a joy or a chore, and seven of them leaned more-or-less toward the “chore” end. Yes, there was Julie Myerson writing about the “adrenaline rush” and Will Self comparing writing to sex. But Amrit Chaudhury, Joyce Carol Oates, and John Banville respectively used the words “trapped,” “misery,” and “anguish” to describe their experience. As Al Kennedy put it, “Sitting alone in a room for hours while essentially talking in your head about people you made up earlier and then writing it down for no one you know does have many aspects which are not inherently fulfilling.”

But the most insightful post I came across on the pleasure of writing came from Peter Wood on medium.com. Quoting from an essay by Samuel R. Delany, Wood points out that the pleasure of writing, while real, is often too delicate to be what drives your work. Writing can be joyful, but if you’re relying on the joy to get yourself to your keyboard, forget it. Commitment, determination, and the belief that you have something to say are far better motivators.

So, I came back to what I already knew. The most important thing is not whether you’re writing with Bradbury’s gusto or Banville’s anguish or something in between: It’s that you’re writing. When the adrenaline rush does come—and it will, it will—it’s like the best surprise party ever. But, for me—for many of us—it’s secondary to the words running around in my head pleading to be let out. Pleasure is good, but it’s gossamer.