Five Myths About Writing That Can Destroy Your Productivity (and Sanity)
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Five Myths About Writing That Can Destroy Your Productivity (and Sanity)
by Marcia Yudkin
Gustave Flaubert, author of Madame Bovary, once wrote a letter to a friend describing the progress he had made on a particular chapter that day. "In the morning I put a comma in," he wrote, "and in the afternoon, I took it out."
This is only one of countless stories describing the suffering of writers.
Many of us go so far as to glorify writers who suffered to the ultimate extent and committed suicide - such as Sylvia Plath, Ernest Hemingway and John Kennedy Toole, who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for A Confederacy of Dunces 12 years after he committed suicide, despondent because publishers were not interested in his novel.
Wikipedia has a list of more than 200 writers from around the world who killed themselves. There isn't a list of famous redheaded writers, so it's safe to assume this list shows considerable public interest in the fact that many writers were so tortured that they committed suicide.
Well, if you want to suffer and have a dark, unhappy life as a writer, you certainly can. But you don't have to. Writing does not have to be a painful experience. On the contrary, after you liberate yourself from a host of common myths and musts about writing, it can become easy, natural and enjoyable.
Five Destructive Myths About Writing
Myth #1 I've already mentioned, that writing should be painful, or that it's normal for it to cause suffering. One best-selling business author talks about having been under the spell of this myth to the extent that he was homeless, miserable and seriously considering doing away with himself. Then one day, fortunately, he realized that an idea had gotten him to that low place, and what would happen if he changed his belief to the idea that writing could be joyful and a road to prosperity? That was the point at which his life turned around.
Likewise, try suspending the belief that writers should be poor and in pain for the rest of today at least. Open up to the possibility that methods you haven't yet tried might be enjoyable, easy and exhilarating for you. You still have the option of going back to the Writing Is Suffering point of view.
Myth #2 is that writing ability is a gift; either you have it or you don't. Some people do seem to have an inborn knack for expressing themselves in words, but just about everyone else improves through practice, feedback and instruction.
Back in the 1980s I taught English 101 - English Composition - at various colleges around the Boston area. From the first writing sample that people turned in at the beginning of the course, I was never able to predict the quality and accomplishment, readability and level of effective communication of the work the same people turned in at the end of the course. Occasionally, people who started off the course seeming to have writing talent made no progress or improvement at all during the course because they believed they were already writing at genius level, but they weren't.
In the long run, openness to better ideas and willingness to try various techniques - and even just dogged determination - are much more important than any native talent.
Myth #3 is that your writing should come out right the first time. And if it doesn't come out right the first time, you're not cut out to be a writer.
I once heard about a writing instructor at Harvard who started off the semester by bringing the class to the part of the library where they had manuscripts by well-known writers from past centuries in glass display cases. And in just about every case, there were cross-outs, arrows and corrections all over the place, as well as first versions that were dreadful compared to the final versions that were now well-known and admired.
Most writing teachers will tell you that writing is actually rewriting, that the best way to end up with something worth reading is to get down something, anything, that you can work with and improve. You may be stuck because you're trying to write perfect opening sentences at first try, and you just keep falling short. If so, you're holding yourself to a nearly impossible standard. Most people can't meet it. You'll get much more writing done with less pain if you write something terrible and then make it better and better.
Myth #4 is that writing is something performed sitting down. From what I've seen, this myth is responsible for more people getting needlessly hung up when trying to write than anything else.
If you have diagnosed yourself with persistent writer's block, consider the possibility that you are a kinesthetic person whose brain shuts down when you sit down. Your brain thinks only when your body is moving. There are lots more ways to write besides sitting down. You can walk around your study and dictate. You can take a long walk outside and write when you come back. You can write while walking on a slow-moving treadmill with your laptop on a standup desk.
In Myth #5, writing is something that you must do alone. For me, writing sitting side by side with someone else doesn't work. However, everyone is wired differently, and I've had many people in my workshops whose creative successes and most comfortable method of creation always occurred in a group with one, two or three other people.
Many comedy writers, songwriters and playwrights compose together with other people and there's no reason whatsoever why you can't too, regardless of whether you're writing fiction, business reports or a how-to book.
Whatever works for you, don't fight it. Use it.
Combat these myths and you'll start to wonder why so many people put "suffering" together with "writing" in the same sentence. For you, writing will have become as pleasurable and natural as breathing or eating.
by Marcia Yudkin
Gustave Flaubert, author of Madame Bovary, once wrote a letter to a friend describing the progress he had made on a particular chapter that day. "In the morning I put a comma in," he wrote, "and in the afternoon, I took it out."
This is only one of countless stories describing the suffering of writers.
Many of us go so far as to glorify writers who suffered to the ultimate extent and committed suicide - such as Sylvia Plath, Ernest Hemingway and John Kennedy Toole, who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for A Confederacy of Dunces 12 years after he committed suicide, despondent because publishers were not interested in his novel.
Wikipedia has a list of more than 200 writers from around the world who killed themselves. There isn't a list of famous redheaded writers, so it's safe to assume this list shows considerable public interest in the fact that many writers were so tortured that they committed suicide.
Well, if you want to suffer and have a dark, unhappy life as a writer, you certainly can. But you don't have to. Writing does not have to be a painful experience. On the contrary, after you liberate yourself from a host of common myths and musts about writing, it can become easy, natural and enjoyable.
Five Destructive Myths About Writing
Myth #1 I've already mentioned, that writing should be painful, or that it's normal for it to cause suffering. One best-selling business author talks about having been under the spell of this myth to the extent that he was homeless, miserable and seriously considering doing away with himself. Then one day, fortunately, he realized that an idea had gotten him to that low place, and what would happen if he changed his belief to the idea that writing could be joyful and a road to prosperity? That was the point at which his life turned around.
Likewise, try suspending the belief that writers should be poor and in pain for the rest of today at least. Open up to the possibility that methods you haven't yet tried might be enjoyable, easy and exhilarating for you. You still have the option of going back to the Writing Is Suffering point of view.
Myth #2 is that writing ability is a gift; either you have it or you don't. Some people do seem to have an inborn knack for expressing themselves in words, but just about everyone else improves through practice, feedback and instruction.
Back in the 1980s I taught English 101 - English Composition - at various colleges around the Boston area. From the first writing sample that people turned in at the beginning of the course, I was never able to predict the quality and accomplishment, readability and level of effective communication of the work the same people turned in at the end of the course. Occasionally, people who started off the course seeming to have writing talent made no progress or improvement at all during the course because they believed they were already writing at genius level, but they weren't.
In the long run, openness to better ideas and willingness to try various techniques - and even just dogged determination - are much more important than any native talent.
Myth #3 is that your writing should come out right the first time. And if it doesn't come out right the first time, you're not cut out to be a writer.
I once heard about a writing instructor at Harvard who started off the semester by bringing the class to the part of the library where they had manuscripts by well-known writers from past centuries in glass display cases. And in just about every case, there were cross-outs, arrows and corrections all over the place, as well as first versions that were dreadful compared to the final versions that were now well-known and admired.
Most writing teachers will tell you that writing is actually rewriting, that the best way to end up with something worth reading is to get down something, anything, that you can work with and improve. You may be stuck because you're trying to write perfect opening sentences at first try, and you just keep falling short. If so, you're holding yourself to a nearly impossible standard. Most people can't meet it. You'll get much more writing done with less pain if you write something terrible and then make it better and better.
Myth #4 is that writing is something performed sitting down. From what I've seen, this myth is responsible for more people getting needlessly hung up when trying to write than anything else.
If you have diagnosed yourself with persistent writer's block, consider the possibility that you are a kinesthetic person whose brain shuts down when you sit down. Your brain thinks only when your body is moving. There are lots more ways to write besides sitting down. You can walk around your study and dictate. You can take a long walk outside and write when you come back. You can write while walking on a slow-moving treadmill with your laptop on a standup desk.
In Myth #5, writing is something that you must do alone. For me, writing sitting side by side with someone else doesn't work. However, everyone is wired differently, and I've had many people in my workshops whose creative successes and most comfortable method of creation always occurred in a group with one, two or three other people.
Many comedy writers, songwriters and playwrights compose together with other people and there's no reason whatsoever why you can't too, regardless of whether you're writing fiction, business reports or a how-to book.
Whatever works for you, don't fight it. Use it.
Combat these myths and you'll start to wonder why so many people put "suffering" together with "writing" in the same sentence. For you, writing will have become as pleasurable and natural as breathing or eating.