Meg Dowell Writes

When did we all start believing that writing is always the perfect outlet for our … everything?

I have a difficult time ever recalling a mentor or a writer I admired from afar telling me that there would be stretches where I hated writing so much I’d want to quit.

I’d always assumed it would be difficult. Never that I would forget why I liked it.

Though no one ever said writing was easy — I’d personally like a word with those who have, I just want to talk — what many don’t realize when they sign up for this life is that being a writer isn’t always going to be a job you love.

In fact, there will be days you hate it. Months you feel you’re dragging yourself miserably through it. Spans of time you just … stop.

It’s those dark and dreary times I want to highlight here. I don’t know if you could say I’ve officially been trapped in one for the past year or so. But at some point I did largely scale back on how much I wrote per week.

And I barely missed it. Until recently.

I can’t say what brought me back to my desire to make words happen. Maybe it’s been there for a long time and I was too busy, too stressed, too focused on other projects to notice.

But honestly? For me, coming back to writing is the easy part.

The hard part will be continuing to remember why I want to stay.

And it takes a lot of effort to rediscover the reasons you started writing in the first place. Because day to day, sometimes they’re different. Some days it’s for your [potential] readers. Some days it’s for yourself. Your paycheck, if you’re lucky. Your ego, if you’re honest.

Beneath all that, though, is the one truth we all must cling to whether we’re currently actively writing or not: Back when you had nothing, and you put words onto pages, you did it not for the money, the people, the recognition — you did it because you wanted to. Because you loved it.

Deep down, you probably still do. I know I do.

Why, then, do we fall out of love with writing? Because it’s work. It’s exhausting. Even “fun” writing requires switching on a part of you that uses up more energy than you realize until after the fact.

Sometimes we realize we’re not getting out of writing what we need in the moment. And we decide we need to stop.

Just because you hit pause doesn’t mean you have to walk away forever.

When you do start to feel you no longer love what you do, remember this: If you ever loved it at all, you will always find your way back.

Like any kind of love, your connection to, care of, and passion for your writing will never be a constant, easy thing. Though you will always have and cherish it, challenges will arise. Uncertainty will surface. You will face moments in which you’ll wonder: “Is this really what I’ve always wanted?”

And that is the very definition of loving something — questioning whether or not we want or need it only to realize that though we may change, we may have doubts and insecurities, some things don’t alter and shift as we do.

However, unlike love — which, if nurtured properly, can ideally withstand the various ups and downs of the twisted, treacherous roads of life — writing is a different kind of constant. It often will not love you back. And when you walk away from it, it will wait patiently for your return without protest.

If you want to be a writer, you can always be exactly that. Writing requires work, but work is not all we do or all we are. When you take a break, whether short or extensive, you’re not any less of a writer than you were. As long as you intend to return to your work, rather than eternally existing in a state of “maybe tomorrow will be the day I seek out a blank page.”

Breaks are necessary. Vacations, hiatuses, pauses. “Resets.”

We sometimes look down upon these ideas when we should really be yelling about how essential, healthy, and rejuvenating they can be.

It’s often in the absence of the thing you love with all your heart and soul that you realize how much it really means to you.

I’m fairly confident that the most rewarding way to rediscover your love for writing is to walk away until you begin to wonder why you did. And THEN, once you’ve forgotten why you left … come back.

Don’t worry about jumping back into blogging or starting a new book or reconnecting with old clients or … any of that.

Just sit down, find a blank page — any one will do — and start writing.

Because that’s how your writing journey began, after all. You started with nothing, and through doing that you built something beautiful. Something you loved.

Start from your beginning. Remember why you did. And then keep going.

You won’t regret it.

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Meg is the creator of Novelty Revisions, dedicated to helping writers put their ideas into words. She is an editor, writer, podcaster, and photographer. Follow Meg on Twitter for tweets about nonsense and Star Wars.

In January 2019, I stopped being a writer.

I didn’t stop writing. Quite the opposite actually; I proceeded to write 1 million words over the 365 days that made up that year and I promise you, at some point, I will tell you why and how I did that … and why I’ll probably never do it again.

When I say I stopped being a writer, I really mean I stopped writing as a day job. I pretty much stopped getting paid to write.

Moving from a staff writing to an editing position at my place of employment was partially my choice and largely a means of filling a need at the company — one I was both more than qualified and happy to fill.

But it also meant I would no longer spend eight hours a day crafting my own words; instead, I’d be polishing someone else’s. Which was fine and, for the most part, still is over 2 years later.

What I didn’t know at the time was how challenging it would become to keep writing a large, if not the primary focus of my life once it no longer paid my bills. Not only did I have to find other outlets for my words, but also my creativity. I can’t just be happy with writing; I’ve done it for so long that it doesn’t always stimulate my needs the way it used to. Which is fine.

But the more I tried to vary my means of creative expression over the year that followed, the more I struggled to keep writing at the forefront not just of my to-do list, but of my list of passions as well.

I loved to write. I still do. I always will.

My identity, however, no longer rests solely in the fact that sometimes I write things, and every now and then they might be good things.

And that has made me happier than identifying myself as “a writer” ever has.

When we start on this journey of becoming the thing(s) we always dreamed of becoming, we teach ourselves to fear versatility. Granted, there are many people who function best when they focus on one thing. And there is NOTHING wrong wth that.

We can’t let it hold us back from making the most of our creative energy, though. Sometimes you just don’t feel like writing, or you know what you want to write but can’t seem to form the right words in the right order. Or life is just stressful and you’re too spent to even turn your laptop on.

Often times the reason we feel guilty or anxious when we’re not writing comes from our unintentional deprivation of active creativity. We’re not writing, so we think we can’t do anything else. But our brains are BEGGING us to do something. We have thoughts and ideas and energy and seemingly nowhere to put it.

I’ve found the best solution to this is to do the thing, or “a thing,” rather. Creativity takes endless forms. Drawing, even if badly (can relate). Singing (again, badly?), rearranging a bookshelf, SOMETHING.

The only warning label I’ll put on that is that you may accidentally discover, as I did the summer I started an Instagram account completely out of boredom, that even if you’re not good at a lot of things … you might really like exercising your creativity in more ways than just writing.

To avoid the existential crisis that can come with this epiphany, however, I’ll offer you this: Just because you don’t write all the time, or it’s not the only thing you do in your free time or otherwise, doesn’t mean your words or work or effort matter any less than they did before.

Even if writing ends up becoming a side project instead of your main hustle, you’re still the same you. Just with different priorities and maybe a new hobby or two.

You are not defined by one thing you do or say or think or represent. You can be as many or as few things as you want, and that doesn’t have to remain a constant. It can change daily if that’s what floats your canoe. Today, perhaps, you’re an aspiring writer reading this blog post wondering what you’re doing with your life. Tomorrow, maybe, you can be a hopeful creative seeking to define where you want to put your words and what you want them to mean.

Perhaps today I’m a former daily blogger who feels guilty for almost having quit this whole thing, having believed for a day too many that my words were meaningless and the world would be better off without them.

Tomorrow I might take 500 photos of my dog and bake a cake.

Why? Because my interests are many, my heart is full, and if I don’t write for 24 hours that simply means what it always should have — that writing is an important part of my life, but it is not all that I am.

Free yourself from this notion that we have to be an easily digestible thing to the masses. You are today what you choose to be, and that will always be enough.

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Meg is the creator of Novelty Revisions, dedicated to helping writers put their ideas into words. She is an editor, writer, podcaster, and photographer. Follow Meg on Twitter for tweets about nonsense and Star Wars.