Irrational hatred is a specialty of mine. As a person whom prides himself on not being particularly open about his anger, I find that Common outlets for my wrath tend to be in activities where I do things on my own. Namely, my hobbies. Even more namely, Writing. And no, you have no right to look at me with jduegmental eyes, as I have no doubt that you would also face similar struggles were you in my situation.

Whether this rings true for you or not, here’s a couple aspects of the creative process that kill me a little inside.

1. Sitting Down for hours

You know what’s fun? Creating your own world and characters that can interact in this world. You know what’s not fun? Being as inert as a potato for hours on end while you mindless bash your fingers on a keyboard hoping that something coherent will pop out.

Sure, when you first start writing, it looks like this won’t be a problem. I mean, you’re too busy lost in that landscape of your world, trying to feel what it is that your characters feel. That brief window of escapism that comes with your first few writing sessions is delightful! Naturally, however, all good things come to an end.

Before you know it, you’ll start wandering into an existential mood fueled with frustration that nothing is going as you planned. Speaking of which…

2. The Story never doesn’t come out right

We’ve spoken before about a Story’s Vision and how it serves to galvanize an Author into work. Having this is all nice and dandy, as it gives the writer a set of goals that they should strive to achieve. Pretty neat right?

Wrong.

Withing a few weeks you’ll see that that image has a few smudges around its corners. You’ll pay little attention at first, but then you see that it’s a tidbit hazier than it had been before. You’ll shrug this off as well, and before you know it, you’ll realize you’ve been staring at an entirely different image than you were before.

And very rarely does this image look prettier than the original.

3. Words, where have thou gone!?

This is a common one, to the point that it’s a trope present in the media. Have you ever had an artsy friend who was into a creative hobby? Remember how often they complained about the ideas never being there? Like, never? More importantly, do you remember rolling your eyes whenever they said this?

Well, if you want to become an author, you’ll probably be saying the same damn thing.

There’s nothing scarier than you being on a writing streak only to pause when you realize the proper words for a scene are not in your mind. You know the feeling, that satisfying taptaptap…taptaptap sound just stops out of the blue. In the worst cases, you could be left staring at your blank Word document for half an hour.

4. Knowing that you’re working to make garbage half the time

I love writing, and if you’re reading this blog, you probably share this opinion. But let’s face the facts, half the time you spend typing that your monitor is going to be on your first draft. And if you know anything about first drafts, then you probably know that they tend to suck.

Oh sure, you can have scenes that you love in that first draft, maybe even scenes that you could consider to be masterpieces. But this never rids them of the possibility that you might have to eliminate them entirely. Be it for poor quality or consistency reasons, this is just another unfortunate truth.

5. An original idea you say? Nope, that one’s taken

There is a 99% chance that your brain is incapable of truly coming up with anything that has not been done to death up to this point in literary history. I’m sorry fellas, but that’s just the simple truth. In the 2,000 years we’ve been given of formalized history, humanity has made its goal be the milking of any and all intellectual properties that have come to be.

Go ahead, struggle to see if you can find something only you would have been able to spot. I’m just saying, that your efforts might be futile.

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As you can tell, a certian author had some steam to blow today. Regardless, I hope you enjoyed it! Which one of these did you find the most devastating when you realized it? Do you have anymore to add?

As always, this has been the QuestingAuthor. Keep writing, my friends.