The agony of writing

A story less told

 
I write a lot. And by that self-aggrandising claim, I’m not only referring to the body of work on here but also to the copious amount of words and printer ink spilt across reports, journal articles, books and rant-filled missives penned over the past decade. As prolific as this may sound, there is an unspoken agony in writing and I’m here to unveil this rather unglamorous literary dystopia that remains relevant to my experience as a writer. This essay is meant to be a well-intentioned but sobering and perhaps slightly mischievous love note to the craft of writing – or at least I hope it will appear that way.

There is an almost methodical pain involved in squeezing the world (or our vision of it) out into coherent sentences, limited by expression, linguistic patterns and social conventions amongst other things. This sensation inconspicuously burbles within the deepest recesses of every writer; the underlying but fleeting torment that bears its fangs each time a blank page is ready for its literary baptism.

First, lets get something fundamental out of the way.

The mundane is the worst enemy to any task and that includes meeting one’s writing commitments, self-imposed or otherwise; the constant battles against distraction, the vertigo of a blank page and the looming weight of others’ expectations. Tedium has a tendency to plague one’s conviction and self-belief. It eats away at your resolve until at some point, you become rather immune to it, for better or worse.

But breaking through this metaphorical barrier results in an unexplainable high that is, rather ironically, difficult to put into words. Perhaps this jubilation, as transient as it is, mimics a sense of literary martyrdom, a sacrifice of a part of your self, for the greater good and enjoyment of others. The romance is however fleeting.

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