On writing through the pain

Where I talk about writing when you really don't want to.

Hi.

You might remember me, you might have heard of me, or maybe you have no idea who I am, but it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that I am writing another book. Not just any book, but the sequel to my debut novel, I FEED HER TO THE BEAST AND THE BEAST IS ME. It isn’t my first book, or second, or third, but it is my first book on a contracted deadline. In about six weeks, I would like this behemoth to be book-shaped and preferably polished.

I am writing another book, and I am in pain.

What is the pain?

When I say, “I am in pain,” I mean many different things:

First, an identity. To be in pain is to be a portrait of torment, a vanitas painting of an author in anguish. A silly cliché, the artist suffering for their art.

Second, an exaggeration used to make a point. I love writing, and sometimes I don’t want to do it. I love this story, and sometimes I just want it to be over. I love my job, and sometimes it is a fucking nightmare. There is a lot of discomfort that comes with writing—sometimes it’s just a whisper, and other times it’s a scream.

Third, not an exaggeration at all.

Where is the pain?

Let’s start with simplicity. If I sit for too long (doesn’t matter if it’s at a kitchen table or desk or couch), I feel a twinge in my right hip. Occasionally my wrists develop a peculiar ache that feels like joints needing to pop, like a doll not fully assembled. If the pressure persists for long enough, the ache in my wrist travels up my forearm, to the point I fantasize at 2 a.m. about hacking it off. (I do not own a saw.) It is always better in the morning.

More prominent than the pain in my body is the emotional pain. Books are not books until they are. Until I type “The End,” it doesn’t really feel like a book, a whole, countable thing, and even then, sometimes it still doesn’t. For most of its shelf-life, a book is an unfinished task that can last for months or years, decades or millennia. (Unfinished tasks in general cause me a lot of mental anguish. I also just told you that I’m on a deadline, so I don’t have a decade.) Books don’t take on the shape of a book for me until around the story’s climax, until the major emotional revelation propels me towards an ending. It is insurmountable until suddenly it isn’t. Thus it is Schrödinger’s Suffering: the pain is both unending and then finite, there and then not.

And beyond a long drawn-out task with an amorphous end, there are the thoughts. Does any of this make sense? Is it too convoluted? Is it too simplistic? Are the characters consistent? Is the dialogue wooden? Is it too cliché? Is it too niche? Does it fulfill expectations? Does it fulfill expectations? DOES IT FULFILL EXPECTATIONS?

Why is the pain?

See, I am writing a sequel. Even if it has its own independent plot (because I despise cliffhangers), its own arcs, its own complete story, it is part of a whole. It is the answer to a question. It doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Thus my suffering is compounded—it must be not only good as “a book” but also as “a sequel.” The second must far exceed the first so as to augment the whole.

(If it sounds like I’ve lost my mind, that is a conversation for another day. Please focus. I’m making a point, here.)

But who says it must be so? Why?

I am the architect of my own suffering at present. My sequel must be The Best Sequel I Have Ever Written because I decided that’s the case. Because I said so. The pressure is wholly internal. One day I decided to do the best I can every day, and apparently, I find myself highly capable and exceptionally lazy. I have high standards for myself only. I believe that I can do better than I often do. I joke about half-assing and taking nothing seriously only to take every word on a page extremely seriously when there’s no one watching. Aloud, I fight for the right to be mediocre and in private, I demand the meticulousness of my craft speak for itself.

I am the thorn in my own side. (Mostly.)

When is the pain?

I carry around this lament as long as my art is unfinished and imperfect. (It may one day reach a state of completion, but it will always be perfectly imperfect. I’m human (derogatory).) And at some point in the near future (probably in the next two weeks, if I’m honest), for the sake of my sanity, my career, and my creativity, I will have to decide: finished or perfect. I always choose “finished.”

I know that my suffering is temporary. The physical pain can be countered with exercise (gross). The mental anguish can be countered with progress (cringe). Every chapter completed is another step towards an ending, a spike of dopamine, and a distraction from the woe.

So what do I do?

Who is the pain? (Hint: egg shells)

I am craving an omelette, and nothing will satisfy me until I have it. At present, I am terrible at cracking eggs—parts of the shell fall into the omelette, and I get egg whites all over my fingers (disgusting). With practice, maybe one day my omelettes won’t be crunchy, and my fingers won’t be gross. With practice, maybe I will outgrow my writing pains. Or, more hilariously, what if they grow with me? lmao

(In this metaphor, I am serving myself the crunchy omelette, and in reality, I am serving the world a hopefully not-crunchy story. I realize it doesn’t fit. Bear with me a little longer.)

The reality is that I write by choice and therefore, I suffer by choice. No shirking of responsibility—I brought myself here, and if I wanted to stop, I very well could have at any point in the last 21 years. I first picked up a pen when I was eight years old, and the crux of the matter is that I like myself better when I use it. I write because I want to (macro), even when I don’t want to (micro). Omelette, eggs.

Even greater than the sum of my laziness and anxieties and the twinge in my wrists and hip is my desire to get this story done. I need it done, because:

1. it has convinced me of its worthiness to exist; and

2. it is the clog in my pipe from which all the stories can flow. So long as this book persists, I cannot write anything else.

As such, the pain is what it is, a byproduct of the reality I choose until I grow stronger or don’t.

“You either die good at cracking eggs, or you live long enough to not mind crunchy omelettes.” - Harvey Dent, probably

There is a lot of writing advice that I gladly dismiss, and the advice to stop writing at the sign of discomfort, to stop and rethink and don’t push yourself if it just isn’t working—that doesn’t work for me. For me, all labor is uncomfortable, but some labor (in this case, writing, storytelling, typing on my silly little typewriter) is worth the potential for discomfort. Writing this book, like every book, is worth the suffering I keep putting myself through. There are chapters that are difficult, entire acts that I hate, concepts that I begrudgingly conform to (while scheming my way out of)—but I stand by what I’ve done.

I love omelettes, even if cracking eggs is pain. So I keep breaking eggs anyway.