On the Sixth Day of Blogmas: Drawbacks of Being a Writer

Ask any writer about the biggest challenge they face as a writer. I guarantee they will all have the same answer. And it’s not the lack of time to write or the narrowing job market, although those are great runner-up answers. 

A writer’s biggest challenge is deciding to write or not write about people who have wronged them. Sometimes, the people who have hurt the writer are people who are still alive — a parent, a lover, a teacher. Naturally, things can get very complicated from here. Relationships or reputations can be tarnished forever.

Humorously, this is why many writers joke about waiting until people have died to write about them.

We’ve all got our secrets — writers and non-writers alike. Except I think writers have it worse. When writers withhold their traumatic experiences from the page, they run the risk of being deemed a frivolous writer or a “beach read” writer or any other names meant to devalue their worth as a writer.

Look, I’m not saying I’m the expert on writing. But I know that literacy is dying. People aren’t reading, and the majority seem to despise writing. I feel lonelier in my resistance to AI, unable to understand why we are embracing the destruction of creativity and critical thinking. 

I want to believe we are slowly turning things back around; that we are beginning to prioritize intellectual curiosity above instant gratification. Sorry, I get a little heated about this topic. Where were we?!

Oh, yeah. Writing!

I’ve been thinking about writing because Blogmas is a writing challenge, after all. I don’t think I’ve ever really done a meta post about the act of blogging. 

Like all things in the writing world, blogging is a lonely experience and you realize a very small percentage of people, if any people, care about your work. Most of the time, it feels like no one cares about your work and you have to accept that in order to survive and keep writing.

I write because I am convinced it keeps me sane and I find it more natural than talking. Throughout the day, I get little lines in my head — a cluster of words — that I know would make a great beginning to a poem or a story or a blog. I don’t know if this is how all writers write. All I know is the language comes to me and I have to get it down pretty quickly. 

I guess this is all to say that I support you, my ghost community of WordPress. I am reading your work. I am here. Here’s to many more misadventures in blogging.

That Blogmas Girl