Wrestling Pythons 🐍

I'm not a good writer. Ok, and?

This week, I’m celebrating two years of writing on substack! In today’s final anniversary post, I share one of my favorite essays from last year (paywall removed) about what it takes to be a “good” writer. If you’ve ever needed encouragement in your writing, I’d be honored to have you read this post.

Reminder: paid subscribers here also get 50% off a paid subscription to my Tolkien substack, Many Meetings (the code arrives in your welcome email!). My secondary substack is where I’ll be hosting my fourth annual read-through of The Lord of the Rings starting on September 22nd (only a month away!)

If you’ve ever wanted a friendly guide and welcoming community to help you explore the beautiful words of J.R.R. Tolkien, Many Meetings was created with you in mind. The read through of The Lord of the Rings is for paid subscribers only and you’re welcome to join us there anytime!

Either way, you’re so welcome and appreciated here. I hope you enjoy today’s free post from The Redemptive.

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Thanks, I hate it.

Writing isn’t easy for me. 

You’d think after all this time I wouldn’t have to wrestle with sentences and metaphors and ideas as if each one was an individual python, but here I am sitting at my desk all tangled up. 

I look forward to writing. I know I’ll feel more like myself once I get something out of my brain and onto the page. And yet, every time I sit down to tap away on the keyboard, I feel a great surge of resistance. Thanks, I hate it. 

Over the years, I’ve learned to trust the process. I know good writing will come out on the other side of me just putting my butt in the chair and staying there. I also know I’m not going to like it at all. 

I used to think resistance was a sign I was doing it wrong. Shouldn’t writers feel a great thrill of joy and inspiration every time they set aside time to write? Shouldn’t the words flow like milk and honey onto the page? Surely anything less than that means I’m not *gulp* a real writer?

I will tell you a secret: if that’s what it means to be a “good” writer then I ain’t one.

The words don’t come bursting, unasked out of me in spite of everything. I have to sit for hours at my computer screen, hunched over, searching for words. I have to sit there and rewrite again and again. It’s hard work just thinking about doing it. The words don’t roar out of me.¹ According to some famous authors, these are all signs I should be doing something else. What a dumb way to stuff myself in a box. 

I will tell you another secret: I may not be a “good” writer, but I am a persistent one. Even now, as I’m sitting here “hunched over” at 7:11am on an August morning, the words are flowing out of me like a leaky faucet, drip, drip, drip. I’m battling imposter syndrome. I have exhaustion from a flare up of chronic illness and the subsequent recovery. I have the timeline crunch of my two kids waking up any minute and needing me in all the ways young children need their mother.

Oh yeah, by the way, I’m a mom which means I have 328 tabs open in my brain at all times including the one that’s enabling me to write the words on your screen right now. These aren’t complaints. This is my reality. And yet, here I sit writing anyway. 

Alexa, play ‘I’m Still Here’ from Treasure Planet.²

a typical morning scene: my daughter waking up, and together, we become tangible vignette of what being mother and writer looks like in this season of my life.

Disagree if you will, but I don’t believe what defines a good writer is how easy it all comes to them. I believe what defines a good writer is how often they’re willing to fall down, taste gravel and get back up again. Give me the scrappy writers everytime. 

I had every intention of sitting down to compose something prolific for you to read today. In my experience, trying to be prolific is about as helpful to my writing as a fox in a henhouse; my inspiration scatters in a cacophony of blank thoughts that are somehow so loud they drown out anything of substance from landing on the page.

I’ve found the better approach is to use the feeling of resistance like a tool to hack away my writer’s block. Does it work? Well, we’re 583 words deep into a post where I didn’t have anything to write about, you tell me. 

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How do you start writing? Become gentler with yourself.

Someone asked me recently, “How do I start writing, I’m not good at it but seem to be drawn to it?”

You start. That’s it. You think thoughts in your brain and tap them, exactly how they are, onto the page. Don’t worry about sounding smart or winsome or witty. Stop trying to be good. You don’t need to be good. You just have to show up on the page. Easier said than done (ask me how I know). 

What if instead of seeing our writing as a polished product we needed to present to others, we saw it as a way to get where we wanted to be and invite others to come along with us? I want to write less about my life. I want to write through my life (my word processor is telling me that’s not a grammatically correct sentence, oh well, you know what I mean). 

I think people assume when you’ve been writing publicly for over a decade like I have, the process of writing starts to come naturally. And maybe it does for other writers. But for me, writing has been less about it “becoming natural” and more about me becoming gentler with myself. I don’t berate and call myself a wash up when the words don’t come. I just split open my laptop and say, “Welp, looks like I’ve got some work to do here.” and crack on. 

Just Call Me Stevia Irwin

Even now, as I’m winding down this essay I’m hesitant to hit ‘publish’ because the subject matter feels too niche. My brain is telling me it’s highly unlikely you’re reading this as someone who writes and wants to know how someone else does it. You may (or may not) be a writer, but maybe you needed to see someone else fighting to use their voice so you could have the courage to find yours.

You’re reading this in the last fistfuls of August. I’m writing to you from a corner room in my house while the sun comes up and the cicadas rattle the trees outside.

Here in the Northern Hemisphere, summer is loosening her grip and I don’t want to let go. The days are coming so fast my brain is whirring like a machine of metal and gears but, when I write, the world slows, slows, slows. And I breathe. And I remember this is when sentences and metaphors and ideas wrap serpentine in knots, this is good work. Even if writing doesn’t come easy—getting my words on the page is something worth wrestling pythons for. (I apologize for so many snake metaphors, I’ll stop now).

Writing isn’t easy for me. And maybe it’s not for you either. I hope you read this and keep at it. Some people like to spend a lot of time trying to define what makes you a “real writer” or not. Meanwhile, you’re allowed to just put your head down and say, “Excuse me, I have work to do.”

There is another way. There always was. 

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I hope you enjoyed this previously paywalled post to help give you a “behind the curtain” look at what my paid subscribers get on this substack.

Thank you for celebrating two years of The Redemptive with me this week. I’m so glad you’re here!

1. Yes, this paragraph was written in spite of inspired by this famous poem which I’ve never liked. I barely know anything about the author and don’t want a bashing session in my comments but I’ll just say this: there is no one way to be a “good” writer. The end.

2.  Of course I linked the song for you. Duh.