It's just me and the cat

Writing to entertain myself

There’s absolutely no one watching, I whisper to myself as I sit down in my writing chair first thing in the morning. This is not a performance. There is nothing at stake. You may very well be the only one who ever reads these words. This is not a big deal. Just start writing. It’ll be okay.

Okay, that’s a lie. That’s not what I say to myself every morning when I sit down to write. It’s what I’d like to say to myself every morning. But what it actually sounds like most mornings is more like this…

You suck at this. You’re never going to be published again. You are a failed writer. Failed. Fail. You are a failure. So now you’re going to try and work on that chapter that you’ve written approximately six different openings to? Lol. Good luck with that, loser. Even the cat is disgusted.

Maybe not exactly those words, but some variation of them. And not all the time. Sometimes I’ve taken what it is I think some of the best pieces of writing advice ever, from Hemingway¹ and I’ve stopped the day before at a good place. This means I’m excited to sit down and start writing again. I know where I’m going. I’m confident that it’s the right direction. I feel pleased with the words I produced the day before. I have, in other words, momentum, which is so much more important in writing than it is in any sport.

But some mornings, I didn’t do the smart, Hemingway-inspired thing. I didn’t stop at a good place because there was no good place. The day before, I was flailing as I sat in my writing chair. And the day before that? Also flailing. And last week. And last month. And…you get the idea.

Let’s be honest—sometimes writing is the process of revisiting trauma, over and over again. More often than I’d like to admit, my writing space becomes triggering. I’ve had a cascade of bad writing days in a row, often exacerbated by the steady trickle of rejection or general fuckery that is also trying to publish as a writer.² It is not going well and even contemplating sitting down to write makes me groan out loud, as if I’m being forced to watch TFG talk about his “concepts of plans.”

Maybe trauma is too strong a word for a bad writing day. Maybe it isn’t. What I know is that sometimes the act of writing comes to have a deep association with bad feelings. Frustration. Rejection. Hopelessness. Anxiety. We are always practicing one thing or another and when I’m practicing feeling shitty about the act of writing, my body pays attention. Yes, you might say, my body keeps the score.

My body does not want to climb up the stairs to my writing room (well, that might also be my shitty knees). My body does not want to sink into my writing chair. My body does not want to move my fingers across the keyboard. My body does not want the stillness that is required for writing. My body wants to bolt and what I’ve learned in this life is that it’s very hard to win an argument with my body. Because, you know, my body is me.

Sometimes I can trick myself. Try writing in a different space. Make a move to the desk instead of the chair. Or migrate to the coffee shop.

Other days I just have to remind myself that there’s really not much at stake. Yes, sometimes I’ll spend the entire morning writing the opening to a chapter only to realize the next day that it’s not right. Yes, sometimes that might happen several mornings in a row. Sometimes I feel like I’ve been writing the same opening for weeks and weeks. This is probably an exaggeration. Even if it’s not an exaggeration, it’s still okay. No one is grading me on speed.³ I’m not working on a deadline. The only person waiting for my words is me. And more than ever at this stage of my writing career, I want to take the time to get it right.

It's okay to be slow. It’s okay to start off in the wrong direction. It’s okay that the “scraps” document, where I put all the things I delete without quite having to throw them away, is now longer than the actual project itself.

It’s not a big deal. No one’s life is riding on whether I get 1,000 words today or not (spoiler—I’m probably not going to get 1,000 words today). So far, I have not developed the power to destroy worlds with my words. At least as far as I can tell.

Sometimes the judging is up close and personal, as in, right over my shoulder, watching each word as I type

Writing, thankfully, is not a performance. No one’s watching. Well, maybe the cat is watching, but she’s generally much more interested licking her nethers than she is in whether my writing day is going well or not. There’s no bombing in writing like there is in stand-up. At the moment, at least, the only person I have to make laugh is me. I’m the only person I have to make sense to. There are no lyrics to forget and no wrong chords to play. I’m the only person who has to be entertained.

I’m the only person who has to be entertained so why not go for it? Why not entertain myself? I mean, what am I doing this for, if not at least partially for that? Sure, I write to figure things out. I write to eventually connect to a larger community.

But shouldn’t I also be writing just for shits and giggles? Shouldn’t I be writing for my own pleasure? Shouldn’t I be writing to give myself that zing of joy that comes from a great story or a great sentence or a great thought? Fuck, yes, I should. It’s just me in this room and I might as well have fun. I might as well lower the stakes and focus on my audience of one.

If the cat doesn’t like it, she can go lick her nethers somewhere else.

So I had this idea for a new feature…Ask a Sociologist. Because I know many people have burning questions they would like a sociologist to answer, even if they have no idea what a sociologist is. What kind of questions can a sociologist answer? Any question. Sociologists have all the answers.

Lol. Actually, sociologists have no answers. It’s why no one ever asks us anything. But if you’d like to hear a witty and amusing non-answer to your question, hit me up. Reply to this e-mail or put your question in the comments.

1. I think this writing advice is from Hemingway but so much writing advice comes from Hemingway, it sometimes stretches plausibility.

2. This fuckery includes the waiting and the anticipation and the, “Oh, you got so close,” which I found comforting early in my career, but now, really, just fuck off with that. Close does nothing for me anymore.

3. No one should much ever be graded on speed, is my personal theory. This is why I don’t give exams. Why on earth should we expect people to be able to produce a certain amount of knowledge in a set period of time? What is that about? Why did we have to do those timed multiplication tables in elementary school? Talk about some trauma.