The Worst Part About Writing

One on the (hundreds of) things other kids made fun of me about was how much I enjoyed doing homework, specifically writing assignments. I loved reading books and writing book reports. I looked forward to writing essays almost as much as going out on the playground.

That being said, let me tell you what the worst part about being a writer is.

My novel is sailing along. I’ve written approximately 10,000 words, enough to get the location and the characters established and the plot moving forward. And it moves forward now, all the time. I think about my novel in the shower. I think about it when I’m driving the kids to school. I think about it during work, and during lunch. I think about it during the six hours a week I spend driving to and from school. I think about it when I lay down for bed. I haven’t had any dreams about it yet, but I’m sure they’re coming.

And that’s what sucks. Ideas are constantly coming to me when I’m not behind the keyboard. Each time my protagonist (Skip) gets stuck in a bind, I go do something else and — poof! — a solution presents itself. If I’m at home I can run to the nearest keyboard and start working again, but if I’m in school or it’s during work hours… I can’t.

The worst is during those hour-long drives back from school, when my mind is racing from having learned some new writing technique. My brain’s neurons fire at an alarming rate, solving some of the story’s problems and creating new ones. Sometimes it’s like watching a movie in fast forward. The story races through me, and even if I were sitting behind a keyboard, I’m not sure I could keep up. Usually I can recall those ideas later when I’m actually writing, but sometimes you can literally feel them turning into smoke and escaping into the nothing.

For me, that’s the worst thing about writing — that I can’t do it 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.