I do not understand my writing brain at all.

I’ve been writing stories since before I can remember.

I wrote Care Bears fanfiction before I knew that fanfiction was even a thing.

I spent my teens making up stories about girls with ponies.

I spent my 20s contributing to the wealth of Stargate SG-1 and Supernatural fanfiction archives of the world, gaining plenty of fans along the way.

And I mostly remember all that springing from a place of joy. I wasn’t trying to make money, I wasn’t trying to get published. Nobody read my stories until I started posting fanfiction online and, even then, it was much more about writing whatever made me happy than it was about finding an audience. Though, don’t get me wrong – likes and comments were very, very welcome!

In about 2006, I went back to writing original fiction and trying to sell it – but it was still based on small ideas I came up with organically and it didn’t feel as if there was any pressure or any real hard work related to it. I didn’t have any deadlines, and it only ever took me a few weeks, at most, to complete a story and send it out into the world.

Then, someone challenged me to write a novel – and somehow everything changed.

Writing became huge and difficult and it felt as if I needed to kick myself in the pants every day to get around to it. And my main projects were suddenly measured in months and years, rather than in days and weeks. And figuring out what to do with them turned into something that made me sad, rather than excited.

But I have concrete, scheduled plans for my writing. I want to finish the first draft of my current novel by the end of February. Then I’m going back to revisions on my previous novel, while the current one is out for feedback. Once the previous one is out on submission, I’ll start working on revisions for the current one – plus, either start on an entirely new idea (and I know which of my other 12 or so novel ideas it’s going to be) or go back to an older one that still needs some expansion work done on it. Basically, I have enough novel-related project work to last me probably longer than I’m going to live… But I don’t ever seem to want to work on it!

I could go back to focusing on short stories. I could even go back to writing fanfiction and know that my audience is still out there (even not having posted anything for years, I still get multiple notifications per week about people finding and enjoying my stories on AO3). There’s nothing really keeping me on the novel-writing treadmill!

So, last week, while having a conversation with my coach, which we’ve had many times before (why do I write at all, if I don’t ever want to do it?), I tried an experiment.

I’ve considered before that I could give up writing at any time. Nobody is waiting for my next novel. I have no external deadlines for it, or for any of the others in my ‘ideas’ folder. The only person making me persevere with this activity – is me. But I’ve never really thought seriously about giving up.

This time, I looked straight at my coach on the Zoom call and made myself believe the words as I spoke them:

“That’s it, I’m done. I’m going to stop writing altogether. The rest of my current novel will never be written. And I’m not even going to look at the feedback I got on the last novel. I’m just going to stop working on it and let it all go.”

And, as I said those words, a visceral, physical sensation of horror rose up from somewhere deep in my soul and my entire body screamed, “NOOOOO!”

Which was unexpected – and revealing…

Clearly, there is something very strong and passionate within me that wants me to keep writing. So it seems giving up really isn’t an option. It even struck again this week, when I was thinking about maybe taking a break from writing for the whole of December, to just let myself off the hook for a bit and stop having to force myself to do it. I went to my outline and looked at how many scenes I still have to do, then worked out where I’d need to get to before Christmas, so I could do three scenes per week at the start of 2025 and still finish the first draft by the end of February. And it was only six – which I can do by the end of November. So, I could take the whole of December off and still hit my entirely self-imposed, completely arbitrary deadline.

But, instead of deleting ‘novel scene’ from my project schedule for December, I started looking at all the opportunities I have to write *more* before Christmas (train journeys, free weekend days, non-working days during the week) and adding notes about those into my calendar instead.

I don’t want to write. But I can’t seem to stop.

How does that make any sense? Where is this conflict coming from? And are all my writer friends really, really sick of hearing me complaining about how I don’t want to write my novel, when nobody is making me do it but me? I know I am!

But apparently, I’m going to keep doing it. And I know I’m going to be really happy when it’s done. I just wish I could harness whatever it is that’s keeping me from stopping, and get it to provide some actual enthusiasm for doing the actual writing!

 

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