The Problem with Writing...

How can you tell someone who might be a writer on sight? In high school and college they're the ones gasping in astonishment at the A's on English papers that they knew were utter shit when they submitted them and wondering how bad the other kids' papers must have been to justify giving said utter shit a passing grade much less an 'A'. In the professional world, they're much the same, only it's reports not papers. Reports in which are found excellent grammar, a varied vocabulary and an absolute refusal to resort to legalese or business-speak bastardizations of the English language to get ideas across. Sometimes they still write creative little bits and pieces on the side but they rarely finish them. They aren't good enough to finish you see.

The problem with would-be writers and writing is that we always want our creations to be perfect. Our characters, our plots... everything must be perfect and unique. But as flawed characters ourselves, for to be human is to be flawed, nothing is ever quite perfect. And as for the tales and personalities of our characters, in order for them to be believed by the reader they must be written from experience and in human experience there is truly nothing new under the sun; not even when we place our characters OVER the sun and far, far away. So we start things over and over... and never finish them because they are not perfect. Whereas an interested reader might in fact actually be perfectly happy, and consider quite good, what we look at as our most mediocre or even abysmal efforts.

Over the years I have become convinced that writers block is one of the most common afflictions known to man. It is not only for the proven (read: published) writer who is temporarily stuck on a plot point. But is most commonly found as the mental wall that prevents many of us from even trying. I sometimes wonder if the only way anything ever gets published at all is because the writer's editor steals the files and tells them "ENOUGH, IT IS DONE," and runs away with the pages into the night. Perhaps if we all had deadlines and editors enforcing them we all might actually be able to finish what we'd started... that is after all the only reason why we finally turned in those shitty English papers isn't it?