You create the characters.

You design their personalities, their past, their dynamics.

And then they refuse to behave

the way you planned.

At some point you stop arguing with them

and just take notes.

Don’t Write

What does it mean, when writing about how to overcome writer’s block, I keep coming up with the answer-- well you can quit writing and not have to struggle with it anymore? 

If you don’t like your book? Don’t write it.

If poetry doesn’t thrill you anymore? Stop writing poetry.

If writing is too hard? Go do something that you like better. 

It feels almost sacrilegious to tell people coming to me for help in their writing/art struggles that they should give it up. I feel terrible sharing that kind of advice.

But I keep coming up against the same answer.

You don’t have to write. You don’t have to be a writer. You don’t have to write that novel. 

And it’s so freaking hard sometimes that if you don’t have to do it and you’re not happy with it and you don’t like doing it and it hurts to do it... then why do it?

However, for me, and I think many writers and artists and creative people, the answer to “do you have to do it?” is YES DAMMIT I HAVE TO DO IT. 

This story won’t let go of me. The poetry keeps me sane. If I don’t write I am unhappy. It is who I am. I WANT TO WRITE. I WANT TO. I WANT TO.

In which case, you have just been given the motivation to keep fighting that writer’s block and to keep sitting down to that page and to keep pushing forward through the sticky plot tangles. To keep writing. If you have the motivation to fight through your block, you can get through your block, because you’re a writer. You can accept the struggle, and accept your choice to keep at it.

“If you write, you’re a writer.”

I keep coming back to that. Because it’s easy to feel like it doesn’t count:

if no one reads it,

if it’s just a few lines,

if it stays unfinished.

But writing doesn’t become real

because it’s seen.

It’s real the moment you do it.

Being a writer is carrying conversations that only exist in your head.

Entire arguments.

Tender confessions.

Apologies no one has spoken yet.

It looks strange if you describe it out loud.

But this is how stories form —

through internal rehearsal.

You don’t wait for life to hand you dialogue.

You construct it.

Carefully.

Deliberately.

And sometimes, inconveniently at 2 a.m.

"Later" is the most convincing lie we tell ourselves.

Later I’ll write.

Later I’ll start.

Later I’ll have more time.

Later feels safe because it doesn’t require action.

But later is also where most ideas disappear.

So at some point you stop negotiating with it.

And you begin.

Being a writer is doubting the draft and still returning to it.

You read it. You question it. You briefly consider deleting the entire document.

And then you open it again the next day.

Doubt isn’t a sign to quit. It’s part of the craft.

If writing is a choice, then returning is also a choice.

No one forces you to sit back down. You do it because the story still matters.

Not because it’s easy. Because you decided it would.

You can spend hours doing what you love

and feel exhausted — but still okay.

Because the effort makes sense.

Burnout feels different.

It comes from forcing yourself

through something that doesn’t feel like yours.

That’s what drains you.

Not effort. Misalignment.

There’s a difference between being tired and being emptied.