Writer’s dilemma

Petty post ahead 😉 You’ve been warned.

I am sure many fellow writers and poets can relate. You write something (a blog post, a novel, a poem – something) and you are proud and satisfied with the words that left your fingers and made it to paper or the screen. In an euphoric way, you share it (- the writing) with the world and wait for the appraising comments and a flood of votes, but… Nothing happens. “Give it some time,” you think to yourself, but time doesn’t change anything. You’re beginning to think that there is something wrong with the app or the site or something! But there is nothing wrong. You read your post again and again. You still like it, but doubts begin to creep in. Maybe you are delusional to believe your writing is good. Maybe you are annoying everyone with your words and your story and your thoughts and your existence. Maybe you are mediocre at best and your post is just as mediocre? And a vicious circle begins and you are threatened to drown in a whirl of negative thoughts and emotions. There is no way out. Just the one. Writing more! And so you write a poem with childish rhymes and post that, too, in a vain attempt to pull yourself up. You don’t like the poem at all. It’s as if you have written the same poem 142 times before. But… This bad poem receives all the “love” your treasured post should have gotten. It angers you. You don’t understand the reason and the meaning behind all this. And it slowly loses its importance too. As long as there are readers you will write. And for everyone brilliant masterpiece you write and no one reads, you write several average poems that are loved. It’s okay. It’s good. But in the long run, settling for less will leave you unhappy and unsatisfied. Every now and then (months after the initial post) a reader will stumble across your words and call them powerful and intense. And you will be proud. Proud for still being around and not having given up.

And what choice does the writer have? Handwritten exhibitionism is what drives them on.

Because if this writer is being totally honest, writing for herself and her eyes only doesn’t provide the same feeling of accomplishment that sharing her writing does.

I hate it when I am this honest – makes me appear all needy and ungrateful. I am not. I am just thinking about this kind of things.

xx