by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
The act of writing comes pretty easy for me — it’s everything else about it that is tough. I can’t spell very well. My grammar is atrocious at times. But the act of writing, and more importantly storytelling — comes pretty easy to me most of the time. And, yet, of course, that’s not the case for many, many writers.
A lot of writers (with MFAs!) are great at the logistics of writing, believe themselves to be writers…but fucking hate writing. Or they’re wracked with existential angst about if they’re even writers at all. Given where I’m coming from — where I love to write and do it a lot without even thinking about it — the difference between them and me is enough to give me a headache.
These writers often want simple solutions to complex creative, existential problems that I simply am not equipped to answer. So they rhetorically ask these deep, meaningful questions about what it means to be a writer and I don’t quite know how to respond. Writing generally comes really easy to me — I’m 100% extroverted — and so I really haven’t come up with any ready answers for how to solve the problems of writers who hate to write, or don’t like to write or can’t write or whatever.
In the end, as I approach 50, all I can do is be grateful for what advantages I do have and to appreciate that most writers who struggle with writing have something I most definitely don’t have — friends. I’m pretty isolated these days and pretty much the more you know me, the less you like me. With a few notable exceptions, of course.
So, as I approach 50, I realize that my quality of life is diminished by worrying about someone ELSE’s inability to function as a writer. I have enough problems on my own, I shouldn’t have to weigh the solutions to OTHER people’s problems. (Which, by the way, would be a great name for a Greta Gerwig move, “Other People’s Problems.”)
As such I’m just going to cool it. I am grateful for the talents and advantages that I have and I acknowledge my many weaknesses.
