Writing is a weird gig. At a recent panel someone asked about the writing process, and I told a funny story about living with five cats and how my process was basically writing whenever I didn’t have a cat sitting on my keyboard, and then I thought, how weird is it that I sit in the same room every day making shit up? Pretty weird.
It’s also weird how easy it is to get depressed or discouraged in this business. Sitting on the panel, it occurred to me that the writers assembled represented a wide swath of the career pyramid. We had folks who’d published dozens and dozens of books and were household names, we had folks who’d published a few things here and there. It’s so easy to look at the former and feel like you’re not going anywhere. It’s easy to look at the shambles of your work in progress (WIP) and feel like it’s a mess, and you’ll never finish it, and even if you do finish it you won’t sell it.
There’s one weird trick I use in these moments. I pull out something I wrote a while ago and read it.
Look On My Works Ye Mighty
There are only a few rules in this life that I believe to be universal:
- Cats > Dogs
- Whiskey > Everything
- Something I Wrote in 2005 >>>> Anything I Wrote This Decade
I don’t think I’m the only writer who feels like everything I write magically improves with time. I’m rarely satisfied with my work in the moment, but let it brine for a few years and open it back up and holy fucking shit I was fucking brilliant.
Try it! Pick up something you finished a while ago and give it a read. Marvel at the nuance you forgot about, the smart plotting you can’t believe you pulled off, the hilarious character bits that make you laugh. It never fails: That old piece I pull out of the hard drive might not be pure genius, it might need some work, but invariably I am amazed at how good it actually was, usually contrary to my opinion at the time. And that always gives me a push to get back to work and finish this piece of trash I’m currently hating on, so I can continue the cycle.
Of course, you run the risk of opening up a letter you wrote to yourself 20 years ago wondering how rich and famous you are and then getting blackout drunk in a deep depression, but what is life without risk?