Five Reminders for Writers

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5) Happiness doesn’t come from external validation.

No amount of praise or status elevation will make you feel good about yourself. Writing is like anything creative. It’s an exploration of the self and the world. In other words, writing is play. When we’re small, we understand this inherently. Playing house or playing soldier are ways that children build models of the world and try to find their place. Writing is no different.

Joan Didion said: “I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.”

This is why children seem so courageous. They dash into the dark and light corners of their consciousnesses and come back with new information about themselves. This is why children grow and change so fast. It’s also why they joke, giggle, and let a lot of the world’s problems roll off their little shoulders.

I’m not saying I have the secret to happiness, but I am saying that happiness and playful creativity have a close relationship. When you write, write to have a good time. You’re guaranteed to be happier.

4) Writing is always hard.

Sorry, there’s no way around this. If you’ve been paying attention, no doubt you’ve read this Thomas Mann quote many times: “A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”

But there’s something strange about hard things. They can become rewarding in hindsight. For those of us who grew up in poverty or places where we didn’t feel safe, we can look back at the bright spots of those times. Perhaps it was our mother, father, or friend who always knew how to show they cared. Maybe it was an unexpected victory or a budding romance.

If we continue to work toward our goals, there’s a decent chance something good will happen. When the good thing happens, we can marvel at how far we’ve come. With this bit of retrospection, the hard past may seem a little less hard. It may even seem golden.

3) Don’t beat yourself up.

Do you find it hard to sit and write? Do you find yourself distracted by…everything?

“I can’t blame modern technology for my predilection for distraction, not after all the hours I’ve spent watching lost balloons disappear into the clouds. I did it before the Internet, and I’ll do it after the apocalypse, assuming we still have helium and weak-gripped children.” – Colson Whitehead

I don’t know about you, but when I was in grade school, I spent a lot of time staring out the window and daydreaming. Sometimes, I get lost on social media and find that minutes of scrolling have turned into an hour. This is just the water swim in.

Still, I remember days when I got mad at myself for not writing more. The outcome was that when I sat down to finally write, I felt like I was punishing myself. I wrote less not more back then.

There are plenty of things to feel guilty about. I don’t think writing should ever be one of them. You write. You don’t write. It’s going to be okay. Trust me.

2) Your writing is a gift.

When you live up to your writing expectations, you’ll feel better. We write for the fun of it, yes, but we’re also providing a service. Everyone who loves to read has had the experience of reading a passage or a stanza and thought, “yes, that’s exactly what life is like! Thanks to this writer for putting my feelings into words!”

Isabel Allende said, “Write what should not be forgotten.” This is yet another example of the gift of writing. When we bring the past forward, we honor our ancestors and bring knowledge to the modern world that would have been lost.

I’ve had many writers ask me why they should try to publish anything at all. This is why: you’re making the world a little better when you do it well.

1) There is no wasted effort.

Sometimes writers will ask me if there’s a shortcut to getting better. They bemoan the journals full of half-baked ideas and the computer files they haven’t touched years. If a writer is further along, they may speak of the rejections they received at the hands of agents, editors, and publishers. The rejected writer may consider giving up. Pish posh, I say, pish posh.

“Easy reading is damn hard writing.” – Nathaniel Hawthorne

You see, every couple of months one of those writers publishes an incredible story or book that people fall in love with. It was the struggle that allowed the writer to produce that beautiful story, kind of like how grit in oysters make pearls. A writer who has had an especially arduous journey to publication often has an extremely high level of skill and tenacity. They cannot be stopped because they’ve come too far to turn back.

Your efforts are never wasted. Your struggles are practice, exercise, fertilizer, and every other thing that leads to blossoming. We long to see your bouquets. Let them bloom.

I’m Maurice Carlos Ruffin, author of three books, a teacher of writing, and a holder of a Masters in Psychology. You can get my latest book, The American Daughters, here.

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