When I say Writing Hurts What I Mean Is ...

When I say writing hurts what I mean is :

A) Writing is a hard activity. What makes it hard for me is:

1. My many drafts. Trying to fix things and creating new problems. Getting stuck in the editing phase after the writing phase. I can write quite freely and profusely.

2. The fine tuning part of what I want to say. Putting in more words to explain. Cutting them back again. The balance of being unable to say everything right over the danger of never saying anything.

3. Never learning to seem to learn grammar. (Never seeming to learn grammar).

4. Trying to explain myself. Not feeling heard. Feeling then I must not be saying things “good enough.” (Well enough.)

5. Writing too long things that people don’t seem to want to read.

6. Getting lost in my own mind.

7. Perhaps mental health issues (Depression? Bipolar? ADHD? Aging failing memory? And the latest thing to consider, Autism?)

Bonus: It always seems I’m never really in the right state for serious writing. Everything in life seems to be too much or too little. It’s too hard to write when I have no time but it seems having a lot of free time also makes it difficult to write. Being too lonely is bad but company can also be bad. It’s a well known thing that it’s never really a good time to write, for most people. You have to do it anyway.

Super Bonus: If it hurts this much, why am I doing it? You know you could - give it up.

B) Being a workaholic can be a sign of trauma.

C) Words are Dead

A.I. is freaking us all out. My friend Marit posts pictures of magazine girls with fires burning in their tent. Articles written about stars, quoting Saturday Night late skits as serious biography. Everything we write on the internet can be taken by A.I. It’s taking all the water to answer our questions (I heard, but I haven’t googled why yet). Is this like Y2K? Or our worst fears coming true? Always a new onslaught of worst fears coming true.

This category “words are dead” was actually taken from a comment on Marit’s post from a writer who can no longer make money writing because of AI.

I myself might be a lot like A.I, all of us are, taking other people’s words off the internet.

C) HAVING A HARD TIME SEEING THE FOREST FOR THE TREES (Let me tell you a story to illustrate this point)

When I visited a family member I was shocked by how truly they can not answer a question. She had gone to the Antique Roadshow in Baltimore last week, is a big fan of it. I was curious and asked her, how was it? Did the judges find out anything interesting about her the objects they brought??? What did they bring?

She looked for pictures of it on Facebook and started to show me other things on Facebook, not related, that she likes. She talks about which part of the Baltimore Zoo, the Antique Roadshow took place in. We debated where the entrance and Victorian cast iron cages are. I love the zoo. Its a cool place. She couldn’t find the photos of the event.

You can just tell me about it, I said. Did you learn anything interesting about your objects from the judges?

She told me about the tickets, and other years they went to Antique Roadshow, and other people in line, and how I can go on YouTube and watch an hour long interview with people.

How there are two famous judge twins, and one died.

What did you bring to antique road show? I asked.

She told me about the ticket system, how it changed, how they do categories different now. How she wrote down notes, because they always found they forget what the judges say. That they wanted to have the sports judge but the girl kept saying it was folk art, the lures. That Donna brought Harold’s antique fishing lures, from his grandfather and father. Here we get to a good part. One of the lures, a plastic cobra looking black snake was worth 40 dollars. It had a name. Other lures had a name. Sadly Donna did not remind her to take photos. And it would have been easier to see what her notes were with photos.

What did she bring to the antique roadshow?

She told me about how she likes to ask questions. Donna says she is nosey. It had been a long hot day for the judges, but someone else brought something that made the judge very excited. And finding out, after all these years, the kind of person they like to have on the show is a person that knows nothing. Then the judges tell them things. You think they would like the story from the person but they don’t.

This brass railroad lamp - she finally told me, after 20 minutes. It’s sitting not that far from where we are sitting. Right in front of us! Thats what she brought, I finally found out. Taken from the Susquehanna bridge, by her father in the 1950s but probably older than that.

Did you learning anything about it? Of course.

More different answers.

What did you learn? Not really anything.

What was its value?

More different things.

It was 400 dollars because it was cracked.

I did try to stay with my question (What did you bring?) like a dog with a bone. I was patient, elastic, but also interested in the answer. I gave in to the moment as I realized I would not find out the answer very easily. As she talked about other years roadshows.

It seemed like it would be an interesting topic. Something she had just done. That she was really interested in. But she was unable to answer a direct question. Instead she tells you everything that happened that day and at the place and other people, like she is getting to the point, but she never gets there. I feel this is also an aging thing, the point we are all getting to now.

And side tracked. OH MY YES. Sidetracked. Down every alley, every side street, every butterfly, every sentence branching off into another one, and another one, and another one. We have stamina. We can keep going lost, into the forest, gathering flowers, one more beautiful than the last.

What is this mental issue? Can you please tell me? It runs in my family, bad.

They can talk this way for hours. You can try to listen with all your attention, politeness, re-directing. Its exhausting. I too have been told I exhaust people. Any shade I throw on my family is just holding a mirror up to myself, in the end. If you ask my daughter she will tell you I do these things. We must tell you every single thing. And I really like it when people let me ramble some! (we can ramble back and forth together a little, thats nice) But it’s also helpful to get directed back to the point!!!!!!!

But it was nice when my family member and I could both remember something. Bring it back up from the memory bank somehow. And we both knew something, together. It was a good visit actually.

In the end I learned a lot about her day. It just would have been cool sometimes, to have a few of my questions answered directly. Like, “I brought that lamp sitting there, in front of us”. Instead of searching for photos of it for so long. “We did learn a few things.” Some kind of main point over view, before you get into the minutiae of everything that happened that day. Its like you only have the energy to listen to so much. And somehow my family member tells you a lot about things that struck them, and I guess me too. All interesting things. But too many of them. And there you are. Lost in the woods.

So I hope this answer pretty well sums up what can be so painful about writing for me, just the over-writing and later editing part. (And then the interaction with culture, audience, support system, publishing, etc. is its own topic.)

I wrote around 20,000 words in May (before I started sub stack) and 40,000 words this month (June) so far. I generally write everyday in some form or other. I write a lot. Writing a lot is not a sign of goodness for me. It’s editing and publishing (sharing what you have, regardless of “imperfection”) and whittling it down. Less is more. I’m of the camp that writes a lot then has to cut back to find their form.

I find being as prolific as poison ivy is an uncomfortable thing to work with. Sometimes I can’t find my way through it. I can’t see the forest for the trees. I become lost, and don’t publish, and even if I do I may not connect with readers.¹

But Bonus: this is also what is so GREAT about writing. And editing. You can find yourself lost in the woods, lost, forlorn and empty-handed, and then make it back home again. You can cut out things too. You can work on it. Voyage in, explore, and come out the other side, changed from the experience. That really is pretty great. But like in life too, you do keep getting lost again.

Epilogue

I wrote the first draft of this piece above,”What I mean when I say writing hurts” early on in my Substack process. Since then I have written more positive reflections about writing. I will probably share them at some point. I feel I have already made some writing break throughs here. That, as I’m letting it all out more: it’s hurting less. Actually, the process of writing this very piece, helped to make writing hurt less.

For me, writing is kind of a sign of the will to live. When I am writing, that means I care.

P.S. My friend Sara edited this essay. She edits on paper and then we sit and discuss it. She is very precise and also cares about not editing out my voice. Just so you know, it was originally 2,925 words and now comes in at 1,835.

1. Also, to clarify, I don’t think its always important to publish or finish a project or even connect with readers of that time sometimes. Writing has to be all the things that it is. I spent many years just writing for myself alone when I was younger, and that was part of my process. Those years mattered. I will always spend time working on things that never see the light of day, that is the creative process. But for me, at this stage of my life, having a problem with never being able to finish, or share, almost any of the writing I’ve started, for multiple years, has been painful.