George Orwell struggled with his writing.
In a letter to a friend he wrote, “I am so miserable, struggling in the entrails of that dreadful book and never getting any further, and loathing the sight of what I have done. Never start writing novels, if you wish to preserve your happiness.”
His letters are filled with this sort of stuff.
It’s almost like he was performing self-criticism for his friends and colleagues to shield him from external criticisms. I see this all the time with new writers.
The Orwell state of mind is not an advantage if one wants to be happy and (dare I say it) enjoy writing. It’s certainly not helpful if you want to stay motivated to write.
Orwell is trying to be writer, editor, and critic all at the same time. He was qualified in all three of these domains. And that was his biggest problem.
If you write with an editor on one shoulder and a critic on the other, writing will be miserable indeed. Orwell was miserable all his life.
Ray Bradbury, by contrast, just wrote. He wrote Farenheit 451 in the basement of UCLA on coin-operated typewriters. A dime would give him 30 minutes of writing time, and he didn’t have money to spare. He spent $9.80 writing that book. Money was slipping away every second. He couldn’t sit there and agonize over things or rewrite the same scene over and over. He got on with it.
So here’s my takeaway: You will gain nothing by hating your writing. It will not improve your book, and it certainly won’t make writing easier. You will not protect yourself from criticism by criticising yourself first.
Hating or loving your writing is a choice.
It’s obviously wiser to love it, considering how much time you’ll spend doing it.
So brush the editor and critic of your shoulders and immerse yourself in your world. Go on the adventure and delight in it.
“Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It’s self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can’t try to do things. You simply must do things.” —Ray Bradbury
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