There are times when it’s too hard to go on, too much effort for no reward, or even acknowledgement.
That’s what happens with writing. Years and years of work and practice while forever engaging in learning the skills required. Asking for help, desperate to hear some honest feedback to know what others think and feel about how the words affect them.
And more work. Fingers bearing callouses, scars, swellings that cause errors and frustration.
Years and years, into the decades of learning and ever-seeking for something, just one little thing to make it worthwhile.
Why do I go on, if it’s like this? Why does it matter so much if no one else is ever going to read it, feel it, know about it? What is the value in killing myself with the desire to tell this story if it doesn’t go anywhere beyond the moment it’s in?
That point rears its ugly head. The point of giving it up, of becoming a normal person, of planning to do things in the real world …
I popped my head up, and it’s full of paranoia, of pain and suffering and fear, and I return to my womb of imaginary worlds within this one, of times and places and people where I do understand what’s going on.
But there’s no one on the other side, no one listening, reading, watching those characters as they undertake a metaphoric journey of learning (Yes, it is. A story is a long metaphor where the suffering is done by the character, but the reader is the one who learns the lesson/understands the purpose).
I’m there again. I want to give up, put all the notebooks away, hide the laptop, put all the drafts in boxes to go to the incinerator or compost. I want to let go, to emerge from the worlds within, to live a little.
And then I’m forced to not do it for a period of time. It’s a short moment, in the scheme of things, in the journey of learning, but it’s time away. I’m forced to not do what I love to do.
The mind is shocked. Pain sets in, and the fictional world beckons, sends a little bit of light to the horizon. And I look, and I imagine, and I listen to what might be said in that situation.
I’m back. The storyteller can’t go that long without the deepest inner desires sending out a reminder of why it matters.
So, although I may have to wait a few weeks before doing any serious word-counts of writing (this is a pre-planned post, so not like me), the real me, the storyteller me, is back.
Isn’t that a song? I’m back, I’m back – but we don’t talk about that fella, do we? How about the other one, Back on the Road Again – or is it the horse? Not being a music person, I’ll leave it to you to find the right metaphor for the metaphor. Whatever is chosen, I will be back, whether it’s on the bike or the horse or the road … I’ll be back (isn’t that in a movie?).
Cage Dunn - Fibber, Fabricator, Teller-of-Tall-Tales 
That first line and the pic had me worried for a second, Cage. 🙂
A brilliant encapsulation of the writer’s lot, not only in forming the words in the first place but finding a sympathetic audience. To paraphrase Churchill’s dictum on democracy, writing is the worst way to save your sanity, except for all the others. Re finding places to publish my work, I recently posted this piece: https://wordpress.com/read/blogs/146659821/posts/2398
LikeLiked by 1 person
I don’t think that writers are the only ones who suffer through this. Creative artists be they writers , painters, composers , musicians and even actors to some extent go through it and come back to their art because they love it.
LikeLiked by 2 people
It’s easy to see the ones who succeed by pushing ever-onward, never giving up, continually learning, but I agree, it’s the obsession with the art/craft/passion that keeps the person going through all obstacles and setbacks.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I write because I can’t not write. I write for myself. I had grand illusions at one time, but I am aging out of any likely dramatic emergence. I’ve found that once I admitted the unlikelihood of success in any public way…I write better. More often. With more pleasure. But, I’m retired and I have a lot of time and not that much else in life calls me anymore. Good luck.
LikeLiked by 2 people
And luck to all of us blessed/cursed with this addiction/compulsion.
LikeLike
I know a few writers who gave up, decided to switch their writing to something more utilitarian.
To keep writing fiction is a constant conscious choice.
Not sure I could stop any more.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I do the occasional piece of content, but it’s the fiction that keeps me off the streets … not sure where it takes me, but I’m a willing wanderer.
LikeLike
The fiction – is for eventual sale. The rest, I give freely – comment sections and other people’s posts are my prompts for the day, jiggling loose the arthritic thoughts.
Every once in a while, I’ll ask someone whose prose I have commented on if they would prefer I didn’t, but the easiest way is not answering, so it’s no longer a conversation.
Then I seem to lose interest.
LikeLiked by 1 person
All comments/feedback have/has a value to the writer, whether realised at the time, or later.
LikeLike
I love comments. Tend to get isolated without them. My kind of folk are scattered around the globe like chips in cheap chocolate cookies – few and far between.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Don’t burn or compost anything! It’s okay to get away from it for a while, but make sure it’s still there to go back to.
LikeLiked by 1 person
The WIsP will be there, but I’ve shredded and composted a few of the earlier drafts of stories already published.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Composting might be a way to deal with the handwritten first drafts of my published works. I almost never look at them once I’ve moved on to later drafts. But they’re all stacked up on shelves in the basement, taking up valuable space…
LikeLiked by 1 person
Same problem – boxes of papers for stuff already completed and out in the world. Why do I want to keep it? So it goes into the compost, or the neighbour’s chook boxes (shredded).
LikeLiked by 1 person
I would imagine most of us who write go through those phases. But something always seems to draw us back from the brink.
LikeLiked by 1 person
That little flicker of an idea that brightens the distant horizon … and we can’t resist the lure
LikeLiked by 1 person
We can’t.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m glad you’re back. I can’t imagine being able to write with a house full of people and the constant worry that they’ll become ill, or that your SO will, or that you will. As for being read…I think we’re all in that place. When I get too discouraged, I do graphics. When even that doesn’t work, I tell myself that I write for myself and if no one else reads it then tough you-know-what. And then I tell myself that I’ll probably become a best selling author after I’m too old or senile to know or care. 😉 Hang in there!
LikeLiked by 1 person
It’s addicting that’s for sure. Well penned Cage.
This year alone l have known writers give up and say it doesn’t matter, but l fear they gave up for the wrong reasons and yet still they write, they write for audience, readers, themselves, and they say “I have given up writing!!”
LikeLiked by 1 person
Maybe they just gave up the label of writer, and will pick it up again later.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Maybe, l think there are other factors at play in truth. They still blog, but don’t attach writer to their name anymore.
LikeLike
They will come back to it, relabel themselves as writers. I hope.
LikeLiked by 1 person
They are still there, l think it’s more of a thing to do with books and the selling of and the disappointment of sales.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I understand that part of it.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes l am sure you can Cage. The marketing of any product today and especially from a domestic level in consideration to corporations spending thousands in budgets can be daunting and overwhelming.
It’s a long game as well and a researched game too, l think some people might struggle with that.
In the case of writers writing books, whilst to some that side of things might be the hardest part in essence that’s the easiest side compared to then publishing and self selling and sales.
LikeLiked by 1 person