I Should Be Writing – A Writing Life Essay

I Should Be Writing – A Writing Life Essay – by Joy DeKok

Sometimes, when I’m out having fun with Jon, our families, or friends, I think to myself, “I should be writing.”

And in a way that might not be fair to these people I love, I am. Thoughts are zigging and zagging through my mind . . .

• That’s a great line. Olivia (the main character in the novel I’m writing) would say that. If Jon said it, I might want to “hear” McKenna (the Medical Examiner from my current work in progress) say it.
• I see a younger than me woman across the restaurant is wearing the perfect outfit for Isabella. I try to take down the details in my head.
• A car passes us on the road, and I try to figure out what make and model it is in case someone in my story might drive a car just like that.
• When I’m really into the story, I dream in my sleep about my characters. You know when dreams are kind of gauzy and weird? You walk from one room to another, and you’re in a completely different place? Sometimes one of my characters is one of those rooms. Far away, and when I try to get closer, they dissolve into thin air or suddenly appear behind me as if I walked right through them.

Writing is an almost all the time kind of occupation. But the “should” comes in when I’m not sitting at my computer with my fingers on the keyboard eight hours a day which I wasn’t capable of in my younger and healthier years. I know this, but the “should” still rises to poke and prod and nag.

Along the way, I got tangled up in the shoulds.

Here are a few writing shoulds that sometimes snag and nag at me are and (and my responses to them in italics) are:

• Joy, you should set a goal to write 8 hours a day. After years of doing this, I know that my max is 4 hours of serious writing. Writing longer than is good for my spirit is bad for the project I’m working on, and my fingers don’t dance on the keyboard they pound.
• Don’t forget Joy, writing hours should be tracked. Over the years, I have created timesheets of different designs hoping for one that will “fit” me. I could have spent those hours writing instead. It’s healthier for me to quit when my dancing fingers start to stomp just before the pounding starts.
• You know, Joy, word goals should be set, tracked, and recorded daily. Precisely. Now and then works for me. I tend to beat myself up for every unmet goal and the tracking that shames me.
• Well, Joy, it’s likely that if a writer doesn’t do these exercises professionally and avoids them intentionally, the writer should consider themselves amateurs or hobbyists. Baloney!

I once read a quote credited to Brennan Manning.

He wrote, “Don’t let anyone should on you.”

My response to this quote is: When I let these suggestions get to me, the only one shoulding on me is me.

In an argument with myself over these things the other day, I prayed, asking God if my responses to these shoulds were pride. I’ve struggled with them for a long time.

I waited for an answer for about a mile (I was outside walking) as gentle truth crossed my mind. I didn’t hear an audible voice, but the words held gentle peace, so I’ll leave the who said it at that.

You’re a writer who writes to a different inner melody.

By now, you might be wondering if my writing life is the flying by the seat of my pants kind and that I don’t set any goals. I used to write down all of my plans. My to-do lists were long. Now I have what I call a done list. When writing or editing, I peek at the current word count, the number of chapters written, and the pages in the manuscript so far.

It isn’t until I finish a project that I seriously look at the numbers. There are numerical parameters for novels, essays, blog posts, FB posts, short stories, and novellas.

I sometimes wonder if my resistance to all this counting is because I have a problem with numbers. Even with extra help and finally hiring a tutor for myself as an adult, numbers and I do not work well together. The tutor shook his head when I failed his class the second time and wondered out loud how someone so good with words, history, and speaking could be so lost with numbers. He suggested that perhaps I had numerical dyslexia. I shrugged my shoulders and left in sadness again. It wasn’t just the multiple failures, although that hurt too, but I was sad I couldn’t “get” beyond the simplest addition and multiplication, with subtraction and division being the start of my mathematical stumbling blocks. I was thirty years old and had not advanced beyond fourth-grade math. I still haven’t. There are still times this feels like a defect, but I’m good with who I am most of the time. At the very least, I no longer tell myself I should be better at Math than this. Then I stop the shoulding and get back to wording.

Words without self-imposed shoulds are a marvel. At least to me.

Until Next Time,

Joy

P. S. What shoulds steal your joy? Let me know in the comments.