Before we go any further, you need to know one thing: you can give up. You don’t have to be a writer. There is no gun to your head. You don’t have to write ever again.
Why do I say this? Because quite often I run into people who believe they need to be a writer but who don’t actually want to write. They seem to think writing is the magic pill that will make them a virtuous or successful person. It isn’t. There are brilliant writers who are horrible people. And there are excellent, smart, compassionate, creative people who never write.
They’re out there. Look out the window. There are people walking around leading happy, meaningful lives who have never written, never wanted to write and never felt bad because they are not writing or not writing well enough. Be them!
Advertising and marketing executives make a living from dissatisfaction-mongering. They fill their coffers selling unhappiness in the form of the idea ‘you are not good enough, but if you had/did this thing, you’d be perfect’. They manipulate the susceptible into believing there is something that will make them right, perfect, a success, whole. And folks lap it up. People are drawn to the idea that if only they were ten kilos lighter, had a cleaner house, better hair, a faster car, or could ‘last longer’, they would be the perfect version of themselves. I have no idea why people fall for it. Imagine we all just woke up one morning and en masse said, ‘We are good enough, we have enough.’
A while ago, I did a gig that was sponsored by a cosmetics company. They gave us a bag of reassuringly expensive products at the end. I looked through the bag: eyeshadow, blush, hair gel, pore minimiser. Pore minimiser? I had never once in my whole life given a thought to my pores, but the fact there was a product called pore minimiser suggested my pores were too big. I assumed they also sold pore maximiser – for people who have pores that are too small. I looked in the mirror. I didn’t even know how to identify a pore! How would I know if they were too big? Maybe I had a massive pore problem and all my friends called me ‘crater face’ behind my back. Maybe they huddled together after I left the room, asking, ‘Do you think she knows?’
‘She must! It’s so obvious. You could use one of those pores as a vase.’
‘Does she use pore minimiser?’
‘Clearly it’s not working if she does.’
‘Perhaps one of us could give her some for her birthday.’
‘We couldn’t do that. That would be too obvious.’
‘But we can’t let her keep going around looking like that …’
What was your pore minimiser? The thing that made you feel imperfect, incomplete or not good enough if you didn’t write? What put the voice in your head saying, ‘You should be writing. You need to be a writer. There is something wrong with you if you don’t write. If you don’t write, you’re not perfect.’ Find out and free yourself.
Perhaps you think being able to say you are a writer will make you feel smarter. Or will impress people. Perhaps you want to prove something to your parents, your siblings or a teacher who said you couldn’t write.
If you’re only writing to prove yourself worthy, here’s a secret: it won’t work! Daniel Burt, my writing partner, said to me the other day, ‘When people say, “I really want to write a novel,” I say, “No, you don’t.”’ His point is that if they really wanted to write a novel, they’d already be writing it.
If you’re one of those people who are not even sure why you should be writing, let it go. Give yourself permission not to write. Let yourself off the hook and walk away. You have one life. Don’t spend it feeling bad about yourself. Put this book down. Give it to someone else or donate it to a library. You are free.
If you really don’t want to write and you never will write, why spend your entire life feeling bad about not writing? Feeling bad about not doing something you were never going to do is a waste of a life. Constantly feeling that you are not good enough, that you are failing, is not living. It’s the opposite of living.
If you feel you need to be a writer to be ‘good enough’, listen to me: it’s not true. You’re already ‘good enough’. I guarantee it. Many people wish they had been as productive as you. Achieved what you have. We’re just monkeys wearing clothes. Didn’t shit yourself today? Awesome! Win.
Do you spend your life stressing about things you should be doing? Feel you could have done more? Desperately seek approval from others? That’s bullshit. That’s agony. Who set these ridiculous expectations? You did. Why? Who knows.
People often claim certain negative feelings inside them are caused by social pressure or the expectations of others. Er, what? What you describe as ‘social pressure’ or ‘expectations’ are there all the time. For all of us. Some people choose to listen and buy into them, the rest of us just ignore them. It’s up to you whether you listen to them. Many of us don’t even notice they’re there.
You might have heard this story. A grandmother told her grandson: ‘There is a battle between two wolves inside us all. One is evil. It is anger, jealousy, greed and resentment. The other is good. It is joy, love, hope, humility, kindness, empathy and bravery.’
The boy thought about it, and asked, ‘Grandmother, which wolf wins?’
The old woman quietly replied, ‘The one you feed.’
Don’t blame those feelings. You have agency. The choice of which wolf to feed is yours.
If you don’t really want to write, but feel you ‘should’, walk away. The only thing more heartbreaking to me than people dying with their music inside them is people torturing themselves about something they are never going to do.
Shit or get off the pot.
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The mind of a writer can be a truly terrifying thing. Isolated, neurotic, caffeine-addled, crippled by procrastination, and consumed by feelings of panic, self-loathing, and soul-crushing inadequacy. And that’s on a good day.
ROBERT DE NIRO
Frequently, someone who feels they should be a writer but doesn’t really want to is someone who wrote something once and had people make a big deal out of it. These excited and usually well-meaning bystanders assumed that because this person wrote something once, they want to be a successful and famous writer for the rest of their lives. Not necessarily so. But this person now feels huge pressure from people who keep calling them a writer and asking them how their writing is going.
When he was ten, my son Charlie played guitar. He was very good. He played gigs. In an attempt to support him, we would tell people he was a guitarist and encourage him to get up and play whenever he was keen and the situation arose. Then he stopped playing guitar. He said, ‘It’s not fun anymore.’ We encouraged him to pull the plug if he wasn’t enjoying it, reminding him he could just take a break if he wanted to and pick it up at any time in the future. He’s thirteen now, and he hasn’t picked it up again, but people still ask him how his guitar playing is going. Charlie got labelled as ‘the kid who plays guitar’. It’s been very hard to shake. It’s a bit awkward when people ask him about it, particularly when they respond in a way that could be seen as disappointed or disapproving. Charlie is firm though: he doesn’t play guitar. He used to. He doesn’t now.
People often ask when I am going to run a Gunnas for teenagers because their special snowflake is a really keen writer and would ‘love something like this’. I tell them, ‘I ran a couple of Gunnas for teenagers. I am not running another. Almost all said they were only at the workshop because ‘my mum made me come’.
When people approach me gushing about how ‘creative’ their child is and how they are a brilliant writer, reader, painter or musician, and they ask what suggestions I have to encourage and support them, I say, ‘Ignore what they are doing and don’t mention it. If you must, applaud the effort, not the outcome.’ If there is a young person in your life who is ‘very creative’, I suggest you simply nod at their creative output, say something like ‘look at you’ or ‘well done’, ask them how they feel about it and move on to something else. Ask them what computer games they are playing. I see so many adults attaching huge parts of their identity to creative young people they know, and it’s really destructive. It’s weird and creepy and a bit ego-confused and sick, really.
Get a life, you ‘I’m not in a band but my kid/niece/friend is’ people.
These young artists start creating because they love it. It’s their own intimate world. Stay the fuck out. When their parents or other well-meaning adults start gushing and making a fuss, they stop listening to their own voice and start playing to the crowd. For the applause. For the appreciation. And they lose their own voice.
Stop fetishising creativity. It is a normal, healthy thing. It’s also a very private process. Particularly for kids and teenagers. Let them develop at their own rate and instead of sticky-nosing and bragging about their creativity, do some work on yourself. Learn guitar or take life-drawing classes – go on your own creative journey. Stop being the backseat driver of someone else’s adventure.
Maybe you were that young person when you were growing up. The one who just loved words, stories, reading and writing and then grown-ups pushed in and started to own it and you lost your way and forgot why it was you loved it and what you wanted to say and how you wanted to say it in the first place. About 30% of my Gunnas come to my classes with a childhood like this. I think many ‘should be’ writers feel like this. Somehow, others have hijacked their identity and they feel like if they’re not writing, they are not living up to this confected image of themselves.
Maybe deep down you realise it’s not writing you want to do but reading, talking about writing, dreaming about being a writer, owning a bookshop, being a librarian, going to writing classes, reading books on writing or hanging out with writers. If that’s the case, I have this advice for you: stop beating yourself up! Be honest and let yourself off the hook. Be a reader, storyteller, bibliophile, creative workshop enthusiast, book-club slut, writers’ festival junkie, literary agent, editor or the person everyone asks for a book recommendation.
You don’t need to be a writer. You need to be happy. Go to happiness.
I suffered major depression eight years ago. I was writing heaps and being paid a bucketload for it, but I found myself in a bookshop, staring at the self-help section. So desperate was I to get well, I bought $350 worth of self-help books, convinced that there had to be something in those dozen or so books that would fix me – something that would give me the key to unlock my box of sad, angry and hurt and let it out. One of the books I bought was The Five Secrets You Must Discover Before You Die. As with most self-help books, it did a lot of stating the obvious but it also held one very important little nugget. The author wrote about an experiment to do with weight loss. Half the people surveyed were given a calorie-controlled diet and exercise regime. The other half just wrote a little note that said something like ‘Move more, don’t have second servings, sweets only once a week’. The ‘note people’ carried their notes around with them all day for a few months. They looked at their note a few times a day. They slept with it in their pillowcase. They took it out when they had a shower and left it on the basin. They put it back in their pocket when they dressed. The researchers found that the note carriers made way more progress than the people on the strict regime.
I’ve used this method many times when I’m ruminating, worried or stressed. I write a note with what I would say to someone who was feeling the way I am feeling, and I put it in my pocket. It circuit-breaks the chatter in my head. When the voices pipe up, I say, ‘Speak to the pocket!’
If you have realised you don’t really want to write, give yourself a permission note. Write something like: ‘Give up. It’s okay. Let it go. Do the things you are good at and you love.’ Put the note in your pocket for a few weeks. Look at it a few times a day. I guarantee you will feel happier and lighter.
Please don’t lie on your deathbed thinking, ‘I didn’t do the writing and yet I never let myself off the hook. What a waste! I’ve felt guilty my whole life. I should have just done what Dev said: shit or get off the pot. So long, cruel world …’
You don’t have to do this.
You haven’t failed. Giving up and changing your mind are not the same thing.
Hell is truth seen too late … but the truth will set you free.
Go! See ya!