Writing a book can suck so much lol

A writing spiral, two months before a big deadline

How did all these people write their books????? (An old library catalog in Warsaw)

On Monday, I briefly toyed with the idea of writing a post about the perfect writing day I was having. By Thursday, I wanted to curl up and give up.

Because my god can writing be excruciating. When I sat down at my desk on Thursday after doing some freelance editing work in the morning, the writing went something like this:

• I stare at my Pomodoro timer. It says five minutes left. It’s just the first session. How??

• I am still full from my very sad desk lunch a while ago, but I think about what I could munch on. I succeed in convincing myself not to take anything from the fridge.

• Will I die or get some awful disease from my 4pm Coke Zeros?

I’ve been writing professionally for 13 years, and I cannot tell you how many times I’ve had these thoughts in the same succession.

I wrote stuff on Thursday. Or rather, I clipped and pruned and moved around bits of the chapter I’m currently working on, all to nail down the final structure so that I could write it all through. I had at least 9 medium-sized freakouts:

1. This doesn’t fit anywhere, but it has to be in there.

2. Does this even have a structure?

3. I don’t know anything, I’ve done too little research.

4. I have too much material, I need to stop looking for more sources!

5. This character may come off as a jerk, but he’s not a jerk. Everyone will think he’s a jerk!

6. I’ve forgotten what my book is really about. I must start this all from scratch.

7. This chapter isn’t smart enough.

8. My sources are contradicting each other and I’ll never figure out which one is closer to the truth.

9. Why the fuck is this taking so long, I will never finish.

I am dead serious that all of these happened within maybe two hours, and if I thought about this list for another 10 minutes, I could add some bullets, but I don’t want to depress myself further.

These freakouts are intensified because I’m on a deadline.

I have to submit 40,000 words (technically, half the book) in just about two months. I have this deadline because my agent negotiated that I’d get a bit more of my advance in the middle of writing so it would be just a bit easier to sustain myself without seeking too much more outside work (I’ll write about payment and schedules soon, because I think the reality of how advances work doesn’t hit you until you’re really in the thick of things). Deadlines make my world go round, but they are also incredibly anxiety-inducing. The contract deadline was for May 15, but that just wasn’t going to happen. Sheepishly, I asked for a 6-week extension, my agent laughing a bit that I was stressing over so little time because people who write books are sometimes late by literal years.

I’m also giving myself interim deadlines for the chapters I’m submitting, my book writing crew serving as accountability partners. They are *supposed* to get this chapter I was freaking out over today, Friday the 25th (saying this here for extra pressure).

These worries are nothing new for me, and nothing new for any other writer, but each time, they manage to create a sense of finality and desperation. I don’t know, maybe this is all terribly boring because people have been saying this from the dawn of the written word, but personally, I find it weirdly uplifting and just a little less lonely when I hear about other people’s writing issues. As I was going through my spirals, two such accounts landed in my hands in a moment of what I thought was some incredible cosmic alignment, instead of the same cognitive bias that makes everyone think their phone is listening to them because of the Instagram ad they got after talking about those exact earplugs.

A usual, I’m reading too many books at the same time (four), and one of them is William Zinsser’s craft classic On Writing Well. I sat in bed a couple of nights ago with a big, banana shaped grin reading about how he was invited to give a talk at a school about the life of a writer. The other guest was a surgeon who’d just sold a couple of stories to a magazine.

Dr. Brock was dressed in a bright red jacket, looking vaguely bohemian, as authors are supposed to look, and the first question went to him. What was it like to be a writer?

He said it was tremendous fun. Coming home from an arduous day at the hospital, he would go straight to his yellow pad and write his tensions away. The words just flowed. It was easy. I then said that writing wasn’t easy and wasn’t fun. It was hard and lonely, and the words seldom flowed.

And then, a couple of pages later, after Zinsser gives the (very good!) advice that we all need to relax and be confident (ahem, I came to the same conclusion several weeks ago, and yet, I forget it every day, 50 First Dates-style):

Telling a writer to relax is like telling a man to relax while being examined for a hernia, and as for confidence, see how stiffly he sits, glaring at the screen that awaits his words. See how often he gets up to look for something to eat or drink. A writer will do anything to avoid the act of writing. I can testify from my newspaper days that the number of trips to the water cooler per reporter-hour far exceeds the body’s need for fluids.

Yes, yes, yes. At least in a newsroom you can go chat with a colleague. The deadline is often that afternoon, the pressure a bit painful, but more like a good massage than a year-long cloud of doom. When in your home office, alone with that cloud? TORTURE.

Then, like a love letter written specifically for me,

Susan Orlean

’s latest post, “Writing is a Nightmarish Hellscape,” arrived in my inbox (on Thursday! As I was literally about to go hide in a hole forever!)

Orlean writes about how, despite decades in the business, she always feels like an impostor, her success only adding to the stress. She recalls the legendary baseball writer, author, and editor Roger Angell pacing the New Yorker office’s hallway, worry written all over his face. The reason? He just turned in a piece and was waiting for his editor’s feedback. It never ends, no matter how many words and accolades you have under your belt.

Then Orlean drops a bomb of wisdom:

After all, writing is not an exact science; there’s never a moment when you are given irrefutable proof that you’re a good writer. Rather, you’re only as good as your last piece, so you’re always falling forward into a new test of your abilities. And everything you write, every sentence, even, is a fresh test. You’re not making widgets. You can’t write a good sentence and have it as your template for all future sentences. You invent yourself anew with each word.

(I hope she forgives me for pasting this here; you should subscribe to her Substack! Another recent post in this general genre was

Anne Helen Petersen

’s— again, very depressingly uplifting — “How Not To Write A Book.”)

With writing a book as a first-time author, these worries come plenty of others that are hovering in that cloud of doom. For me they include (1) fitting everything into the contracted word count (or acceptable overage) (2) holes and omissions that someone will notice and think I’m a fraud (3) another book coming out on the same topic (4) not having enough time (5) that my “platform” is too small and no one will buy the book (6) that in college, I didn’t study sociology or anthropology or critical theory or or or, etc. etc. etc.

You may think wah wah, poor you writing a book, and getting paid for it. And you’d be right. Writing a book is a privilege. But sometimes, it can suuuuuuck.

Huh. A post about a perfect writing day would’ve been way more boring.

---

My subscription is now voluntary, but if you’d just like to drop a couple bucks once, that’s amazing and greatly appreciated! The tip jar is here.