Swimming against the current

There are some days when writing can feel like we're swimming against the current, and we have to acknowledge we aren't able to make any headway. 

It can feel like we're caught in a riptide pulling us further and further from shore, and even though we keep trying to swim toward our destination, swimming only gets harder.

And the harder we try to return to shore, the more fatigued we become... and the more impossible it is to keep swimming.  

Each stroke leaves us weaker, and each effort we make to keep writing feels more and more futile.

What are we supposed to do? 

Do we stay in the water and keep trying to swim against the current? 

Or do we try to get out?

In such a situation, the first thing we might need to do, I suspect, is to recognize that we're caught in the riptide.

And then we need to stop struggling, stop trying to swim back toward shore. 

I know it sounds counterintuitive, but on days when it feels like we're swimming against the current, we need to let go of what we want to do and allow the current to take us where it wants to take us. 

Only then, when the current begins to slack off and loses its power, can we slip out of its grip and start swimming again-- parallel to shore rather than directly toward it--until we've escaped the current's clutches entirely and can swim back towards shore unimpeded. 

It may take a while when we're swimming against the current to realize “this isn’t working,” and it takes courage to be willing to let go of what we're trying to write, to stop struggling, put down our pen, and refrain from pushing on.

But in order to keep writing, we need to figure out another route, a different path, to reach our destination. 

There is a fear in all of us, I suspect, that if we stop writing, we’ll sink to the bottom of the sea and never return to the surface again. 

Writing is what keeps us afloat, after all.

But here's the thing: when we stop writing, we don’t sink.

We keep floating, sustained by the desire to write, our love of words, our need for stories and poems.

And floating--that stage when we're still in the water but not swimming in a particular direction-- can give us the perspective we need to regain our bearings and see where we are and where we need to go.

Once we're able to stop swimming against the current, we can begin making our way towards home.

If you'd like to check out a few helpful articles on when writing is hard, visit:

https://www.well-storied.com/blog/hard-truths

https://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/7-things-to-try-when-writing-is-hard/

https://writingcooperative.com/5-simple-reasons-why-writing-is-hard-really-hard-1cfee9ced1f5

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/culturally-incorrect/201804/writing-when-its-hard

https://medium.com/the-brave-writer/if-youre-having-a-hard-time-writing-maybe-this-is-why-f1802a0b86b3

A Writer’s Self-Worth

 Every writer reaches a point in the writing process when he hits a wall, swims into a net, gets snagged by a shoal, and is unable to swim past it.

Whether it’s loss of confidence in one’s writing, fatigue from spending too much time with words, hand cramps from carpal tunnel, emotional resistance to investigating one’s imagination, physical discomfort from sitting too long, or eye strain from staring for hours at a computer screen—one or more of these walls can lead a writer to question his worth.

And questioning one’s worth as a writer can lead to questioning the worth of one’s words, which can lead inevitably to questioning what value your work has and if there’s a point to putting words down on paper at all.

When such a moment comes, it drains away the writer’s love of stories, passion for searching for words and truth, eagerness to find something new that no one has ever found before or written in quite the same way. It’s all forgotten.

The moment a writer hits such a wall, he can feel stuck in quicksand, believing that he’s written his last word, that he has no more strength to swim another stroke. There are no more words left to give. Why, he wonders, did he get into the water in the first place?

As soon as I hear myself asking such questions, I can become discouraged. Our society places so much emphasis on riches and success. If you’re not a NY Times Bestselling author—in the top ten!!— you’re a failure. And if you’re a writer struggling financially, it’s easy to think you might have been better staying in law school.

Such thoughts raise red flags and alert me to when I might have hit a wall and need to do the backstroke to regain my perspective.

I have to remind myself that writing isn’t solely about earning money. Few writers can support themselves with their work (though it would be lovely for the rest of us if our work gained sufficient acclaim to support us). Writing, rather, serves as a way for me to understand the world and my life. It is a process of exploration, a tool that lets me see and learn and discover new things about my relationship to the world and myself.

The criteria for measuring our success don’t have to be how much money we report on our tax returns each April or how many books we’ve published in the past decade. Instead, we might ask how much we’ve learned in the past year about writing and life. We can look back at the past year and see the number of journals on our shelf and feel that we succeeded simply because we faced a blank page day after day and managed to put words down. We are successful writers because we understand something differently, something that we might not have understood without having written.

On days when I feel like I’ve hit a wall, I tell myself (again and again) that writing isn’t about worth or financial gain. It’s about exploring and discovering things that I never knew before putting my pen to paper. It’s about trying to wrest meaning from a world that often seems to lack meaning or whose meaning is hidden beneath the surface of events.

The next time you feel yourself hitting a wall and questioning your self-worth as a writer, remember your words do have value. You are a writer worth all the effort you’ve given to make sense of the world.

Hitting the wall doesn’t have to signal the end of a project or, on a deeper level, a career. More likely, it’s just a temporary pause, a sign that something needs to change.

Sometimes a writer simply needs to alter his direction and shift his perspective to see a particular problem from a different angle and discover a path past it.

Start with a question: What do you love about writing? (Or: What did you used to love about writing?)

Find what you love about the process... and go from there.