WHY you're never happy with your writing

we're sisters best friends and authors on a mission to help you stoke your creative fire and live the life of your dreams we believe that purpose fuels passion and that creativity is your secret weapon for mass construction there's never been a better time to bless the world with your dream realized you're listening to the kate and abby show what's up guys and welcome back to another episode of the kate and abby show this is episode 41. do you ever feel discouraged or even disgusted when you go back and read your own writing do you ever catch yourself saying i don't know if this is any good do you struggle with comparison and feel like you'll never be able to write as good as so and so or insert your favorite author if so this episode is for you so keep listening in this episode kate and i will explain why you are never happy with your writing and we're going to share some very practical ways to rediscover your love for your writing before we get started we have to thank our sponsors who are you you guys are the ones who support this show and keep it going and we appreciate your support so so much so if you get value out of this show go to patreon.com slash the kate and abby show and help us keep this show alive and free of interruptions okay let's get right into it why you're never happy with your writing there's a few reasons and um probably not an exhaustive list that we're going to uh give yeah but it's a good list it's a good list i think we picked out the major ones that we've seen reoccurring quite a bit in the writing community yeah i agree um the first one that came to mind for me is and these are in no particular order but you're not happy with your writing because you're expecting too much so you're setting the bar too high and you have this expectation in your mind of exactly what your your writing should be right or should sound like or read like and it's not meeting that expectation for whatever reason so you're unhappy with it it's yeah it's kind of like when you imagine an event over and over and over again something you're going to do and you hype it up in your mind and usually when it happens it never meets this dream like expectation of what you wanted it to be because it's just not going to be that fantastical standard right and i think a lot of times we screw ourselves up when we create this standard for art and art is something that's supposed to exist really outside of standards we're supposed to come to it with creativity and imagination and not this golden rule that we're trying to always line up with right yeah and so i think a lot of times that trips us up yeah looking at it completely different like there's a right and wrong way to do it or there's this ideal that we need to live up to right and then there's like no freedom for creativity there right you know it's like we have this very specific definition of what good is yeah and a lot of times that's kind of a well we're going to get into the comparison thing next but a lot of times that's that expectation comes from what you've seen before in which case it's like why are you comparing what what you're about to create i.e what has never been created before um with something that's been created before right you know by someone else who isn't you yeah it's it's a it's a it doesn't work as a comparison right it doesn't serve you at all to compare those things and we're going to get into comparison in the next point but i feel like a lot of writers like you said kind of reliv or live this experience in their mind or have this really idealistic expectation of what my writing should be and then when it doesn't meet that expectation and not saying that it's less than it's just different right so it might actually be better in another way have you ever had a writing day where like you're writing and you write like a sentence or a paragraph that in the moment you think to yourself that i don't like that at all that's rubbish and then you continue writing because you just don't want to get distracted on it and then the next day or whatever you come back to it and read it and you're like oh that's actually pretty good yeah and many people have no problem with it many times and sometimes you even like it yeah the thing that you actually didn't like yesterday you like today absolutely there's been times definitely when i just don't feel in the groove yeah like all this is probably all rubbish yeah i just don't feel comfy i don't feel in my zone and then i'll go back and read it a day or so later and i'm like dang that's good i'm so glad i didn't like just throw up my hands and walk away from it because it's actually quite good it's that in the moment you're too wrapped up in it right or you're thinking of someone else's writing or a process a lot of times i think a lot of people um who write and do creative work get caught up in process that's why all these like you know motivational videos about like uh uh millionaire work routines and stuff are popular because people are trying to make their process make their routine like someone else who is more successful than them someone else who's reached this you know plateau where the greek gods hang out and that's where you want to be so you're trying to like make your process be someone else's you know what i mean and you can find videos like that like oh you know jk rowling's writing routine so-and-so's writing routine you know and it's like well guess what you're not that author right and you shouldn't try to be that author because every single person has different needs creatively physically spiritually it's no different so you need to look at what are my own creative needs what are my own um quirks and things i like and dislike and what am i going to um what feels good for me you can't muscle through that to try to make it um be like someone else's just so you can reach this level of success with your writing because that's not even success really you're stifling yourself yeah you know yeah exactly i agree 100 and as far as um the expectations thing something that's really helped me is to set the bar lower and to say to myself when i go into a writing day that i'm you know feeling intimidated by um is just set the bar really low and be like i don't even care how this turns out like if you literally can have that mindset of i don't care if this is rubbish you at least in my experience i end up writing better if i set the bar extremely low i kind of surprise myself with oh wow this is actually really good not that i ever expect myself to write like horribly yeah because i don't think it's possible for an experienced writer to write terribly you know right um just not up to your exacting standards for that day but if you set the bar lower then you'll end up surprising yourself in a in a good way right sort of like not expecting sort of like in life how if you don't expect things you'll just be pleasantly surprised when good things happen right and not be disappointed when the things that you expected don't happen so sort of the same philosophy i guess with with a writing day yeah absolutely and i think that as creatives we can tend to expect too much of art and use it more as a mechanism that meets a certain need to create rather than just the enjoying the thing itself enjoying the process of creating itself not treating it as like a means to an end right you know what i mean um like showing up for the joy of the craft the joy of being able to write right not just oh you know i didn't hit the amount of words i wanted to or whatever um and i think that's something we have to remind ourselves of from time to time yeah for sure present yeah definitely um so we started to talk about you're comparing yourself to other writers that's the next reason why you're probably not happy with your writing is because you're comparing yourself to other writers whether their process or their finished product neither one is is something you should compare your own process and your own finished product too because you are your own person you're your own writer you are unique in that way and what you do will never look like exactly like what another person does and that's just how it is so it's it's ridiculous to compare yourself to another writer even me and katie with how close we are and how we've grown up with each other and we write across the table from each other pretty much every day and we have been doing that since we learned how to write yeah um and our processes are so different and our books are also so different from each other so it's like we can't even somebody who is even two writers who are extremely close like we are yeah it's impossible to compare you know i would exactly i never compare my writing to yours you never compare your writing to mine because we're both unique writers yeah every single person is unique and different so that doesn't end with your writing style yeah and i think a lot of people like you're saying it doesn't even have to be a published author it can be a writing buddy maybe it's someone in your writing group who's like you know oh i hit my 5 000 word a day goal and you're there like oh i wrote 500 words well whatever you know yeah everyone's process is different it's not and they're still right or wrong and good or bad and their style yeah yeah because i think a lot of writers compare their style like oh i don't write as good as so and so but it really is just a style difference yeah and it's a preference you know it's like saying this type of this food is bad and this food is good well that's actually just your taste it's your personal preference you can't tell me that a food i like is bad just because you don't like it you know or that this food is really good i might hate it so it's really a taste thing you know it's not a oh this person is better that to me the person who is the better writer is the person who can make the reader feel the most and relate to the characters the most and remember the story the best exactly you know has nothing to do with prose and style and stuff like that that's just preference and taste right exactly it is a complete taste thing because what some what one person wants from a book won't be what somebody else wants from a book that's why you have completely different genres you have completely different styles and there are people there your people are out there regardless of what style you write in regardless of what you think of your writing your people who want to read your writing are out there and they're more accessible now than they've ever been in the age of the internet so 100 encouraged yeah for sure the next one on the list is you're never you're never happy with your writing because you're too close to it that's something that i definitely have felt probably more than any of the others on the list i'm also going to relate to the last one a lot too but i think i relate the most to this one because oftentimes if i feel like something is just off with my writing or i don't like how it's turning out most of the time it's because i'm overthinking it obsessing over it and i'm way too close to it and i need to create some distance whether that's time away from it or working on another project to gain perspective yeah you know yeah i think you can definitely get way too wrapped up in a project and be too close to it to see clearly especially when you get into the editing process with a book because that's something i've noticed a lot with the project i'm working on that after a while it starts to it's like when you look at a word too long and it doesn't even look like a word anymore it's like what does that even say yeah you know it's like you're just too close to it you've looked at it way too much you need someone else to look at it someone you trust someone who wants the best for you and your project but who will give you an honest opinion yeah and have that person look at it and give you a little bit of feedback because most likely it's you are bored and that's okay that means you've spent a lot of time and a lot of you've put a lot of hard work into your manuscript and that's good but you have spent too much time with it to be able to judge it accurately you know it's that's just the way it goes so you need someone who's not as close to it whether you're in the editing stage or if you're still writing if you're like oh well i'm halfway through the book and i'm just obsessing over this part then ask a friend to read it yeah give you give you an honest opinion because most likely things are not as bleak as they seem things will seem a lot more uh grave to the author than they are in reality yeah that's very very true because you're the one who wrote it you spend like so much time with it that you can't you can't see the see the good in it right yeah i think the the boredom point is very good point um in that and like we were talking about in the last episode or the one about grit rather um that boredom is a side effect of mastery so if you're taking it seriously and you're working really hard on this thing it's probably tedious at this point and you're probably kind of bored with it so that's probably another reason why you are not a fan of it anymore yeah which is a good bad thing so you know it's a dichotomy right that you just need to deal with yeah for sure and the last one that i wrote down here is that you are taking it too seriously um you're not happy with it because you're taking it too seriously and that's something that i know i follow i definitely fall into that trap of taking it too seriously sometimes and not finding the fun in it um and this kind of goes back to setting the bar lower i think is what if you could approach your work in progress with a attitude of i'm just going to have fun with this and i don't expect anything from it i don't expect the outcome of what it's going to be and i'm not going to take it so seriously i'm going to have fun and just rediscover my love for writing and we'll just see what happens right most of the time it will turn out even better than it would have if you were really you know putting your nose to the grindstone and trying really hard yeah to make it good you know exactly yeah i think especially for um some of the writers listening who have written when they were kids will remember that when your kid and you start writing it's just because you're having fun doing right that's how kids are such a great example of how to be present and live in the moment because they're not thinking about what other people will think of the writing they're not thinking about whether it will sell they're not thinking about whether their editor will like it or not they're just thinking about the enjoyment of writing a story in this moment and i think that gets lost in translation a lot of times as we grow and start to publish books and our minds get clouded with the extra things that need to happen but it's so important not to lose that foundation because if you lose that foundation you really lose your drive because if it becomes no longer fun that takes the beauty of the craft away that's why you started writing in the first place because you enjoyed writing right so a lot of times we um when we start to make it an unpleasant experience to write we're doing ourselves a disservice yeah because we will be publishing less books so you know we won't be furthering our writing career by making an unpleasant experience for ourselves so all the important like business aspects even those route back to having fun while you do it or else you're not going to write as much you're not going to to engage in something that is an unpleasant experience yeah you know what i mean so you have to make it fun because otherwise you know going to brain science which i know you love when you repeatedly make writing an unpleasant experience when you even think about going to write the neurons in your brain fire and tell you like uh that wasn't so great last time we really weren't happy with ourselves last time we did that maybe we should do something else oh look pinterest you know so yeah you have to make it fun because that's what your brain is going to remember that's what's going to become wired into your memory is these feelings um what you make of the writing experience so it has to be fun you need to take the pressure that you're putting on yourself off i think yeah 100 plus if you're not happy are you really successful right that's true you have to right that's a great point think about like okay who are you as a successful author um publishing books and i'm happy somewhere whatever doing on a beach figure out what that ideal is okay well the only way to get there is to be that person now right yeah maybe you won't be on a beach but you have to be as happy as you would be because that's what's going to channel into your writing yeah if it's if there's this desperation to get to a point it kind of just pushes it farther away yeah you know and writing is kind of funny because it's like nothing really changes like even when you become successful a successful author you're still going to write books right you're just gonna sit there at your desk and turn your ideas into books and go through the whole process of doing that over and over again so that kind of never changes in that way you know um i don't remember who said this quote or who is credited saying it but i heard a quote some somewhere that went um if you're not happy with what you have you'll never be happy with what you get and i thought that's really true both in life and in a writing career yeah so if you're not happy with writing now with your writing you know if you're right if you're never happy with your writing now then you won't be happy with your writing in the future even if you got all the best book deals ever and your books all got published and turned into movies or whatever your ideal is even if you had all those things and you still aren't happy with your writing are you really successful exactly you know right so yes getting a little philosophical here it's 100 true though and it carries over into everything we do it doesn't end with our creative projects and careers and like you said okay well you being a successful author you're still going to be sitting here writing a book so you have to learn to be happy right with that process finding what works for you finding the softness finding the ease in the present moment i i think that that's what i remind myself of so often on it on a daily basis when i'm writing is how can i make this an enjoyable experience for myself how can i make um how can i find the ease how can i invite gentle joyful energy into this moment and maybe it has to do with how you set yourself up or where you're writing or how you're writing or the environment you're writing in bring joy into your space and that's what makes it fun that's what makes takes the serious edge and the little bit of like anxiety of perfectionism out of it is making a fun joyful experience for yourself yeah i agree and i think that you have to do that because it's normal to not like your writing or to not like what you make even if you're having fun making it even if it's something that's creative and something you're passionate about every single person who is a creative has been upset and annoyed at their writing especially famous people and the masters have been upset at their own work me and katie always talk about the letter that michelangelo sent to i think it may have been his cousin i can't remember who it was but i printed off a piece of it because i had to read it on this episode how michelangelo was unhappy with his painting when he was working on the vault of the sistine chapel and that's something that everybody you know praises to high heaven they take pictures of it they travel the world to see it it's the most one of the most amazing well-talked about well-known uh works of art ever made but when michelangelo was painting it he had a pretty hard time and didn't like it and you can look up the whole letter the whole letter is hilarious abby was writing it i was in stitches i'm like man this guy was a writer is what he was he was the whole letter is hilarious but i just took this one piece to read you guys um which is the very end how he ends the letters my painting is dead defend it for me giovanni protect my honor i am not in the right place i am not a painter as on my favorite michelangelo quote i am not a painter so if you ever said to yourself i am not a writer i cannot do this then you are not alone and uh pretty much all of the masters all of the great artists of the world have been upset and annoyed by their work whether that was writing or painting or anything so you're in good company if you're a little bit annoyed but apply all of the principles that we talked about today in this podcast and see how it goes see if you can rediscover the joy and the love for your work and start to love your writing again or start to love it for the first time if you've never loved it before because it will make your process so much better and i like to close with a quote now for each podcast to leave us on a good note and um i saw this one and i was like this is perfect this is a quote by neil gaiman the one thing that you have that nobody else has is you your voice your mind your story your vision so write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can and i think that's a pretty good way to wrap up this episode so boom that's it if you enjoyed this episode of the caton abbey show share it with your friends and leave us a nice rating we always appreciate that again thank you to our patrons who make this show possible who support us um your support keeps us going and if you get value out of this show go to patreon.com slash the kate and abby show and help us keep it alive and free of interruptions also be sure to check out the video segment video version of this podcast if you haven't already that is on kate's youtube channel which is youtube.com k a evans and you can also find a ton of uh writing resources on my channel which is youtube.com abbyemens until next time stoked and rock on

Channel: K.A. Emmons

Views: 6,225

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Id: PM67LKVnFcU

Length: 25min 29sec (1529 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 08 2021