Member-only story
Writing Is Hard as Hell
Even for writers
Through the help of a book about boosting creativity, I recently realized that I’ve been holding onto a negative core belief about writing since 8th grade.
Ms. DeCarlo was our 8th grade English teacher. She was very pretty, relatively young, definitely cool, and really tough to please. One day, as she had been wont to do, she gave the class a writing assignment and several days to complete it.
I immediately and relentlessly began stressing. I don’t remember the assignment’s exact details, but it was creative I felt that I was a creative person, and I badly wanted to prove that by writing something really good — as I always felt when creative assignments came along.
As was also (and is still) part of my method, my desire to do well led me to procrastinate until I had the absolute perfect idea, the perfect circumstances for writing that perfect idea, the perfect amount of time to do it, and a huge flash of desire and motivation to sit and do the work.
Needless to say, I never got any of those things.
The night before the assignment was due, I went to bed still stressing. I told myself as I turned off the light, “Eh, oh well. I guess I’ll just crank out some bullshit flowery language at lunch tomorrow. I’ll make up some overly dramatic metaphor, like…” and then…