The Suffering Writer, Part 1

“Fea­ture image cour­tesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/manojvasanth/ via Cre­ative Commons”

To me writ­ing has been about long nights, star­ing at a white screen cov­ered in lit­tle words. It’s been about talk­ing about who I am, who I’m not and all the lit­tle things in between. I’ve suf­fered through all of it. A writer’s suf­fer­ing is their guide to what they should write.

My dis­cov­ery started a few weeks ago with my post about anger. I knew with that post I’d dis­cov­ered my voice, then last week with the Path of the Writer based on the Eight­fold Path of Bud­dhism I truly found my topic, Incor­po­rat­ing Bud­dhist teach­ings into my blog posts, I’ll talk more about this on Wednesday.

This week it con­tin­ues with The Four Truths of Being a Writer based on The Four Noble Truths. The Four Truths of Being a Writer had to be bro­ken into a two-part series since they can’t be explained in one post with out it being over 500 words, which is my limit for blog posts.

Here is The First Truth of Being a Writer:

• Every writer suf­fers. Some suf­fer too lit­tle, oth­ers too much, but each of us suf­fer in our own way. It’s through our suf­fer­ing we dis­cover our writ­ing voice.
• In our suf­fer­ing we find out who we are. It’s in this self-discovery we truly find what we’re should write. Chas­ing the cur­rent trend isn’t what you should do, your writ­ing is yours. In the begin­ning of our writ­ing we try to emu­late oth­ers as we learn, it’s only after find­ing our voice we dis­cover what we’re meant to write.

The Sec­ond Truth of Being a Writer:

• The cause of our suf­fer­ing is the delu­sion that we’re going to be rich by writ­ing. This delu­sion is helped by our own mind telling us that we can do what other authors like J.K. Rowl­ing, E.L. James, Stephe­nie Meyer and other writ­ers who seem to come out of nowhere and make their money and become famous.
• These authors didn’t chase the cur­rent trend, they made the trend their writ­ing because they believed enough in their writ­ing. Chas­ing the cur­rent trend will not be hon­or­ing who we are and not being faith­ful to our­selves and what we choose to write about.
• Being faith­ful to our voice and our writ­ing is more impor­tant than chas­ing the cur­rent trend. We must use our suf­fer­ing as writ­ers and as humans to write some­thing that will help peo­ple, move peo­ple and for the bet­ter­ment of society.

Think of the first book that moved you to be a writer, that’s what I mean by the Bet­ter­ment of Soci­ety. It’s writ­ing that moves peo­ple which brings about the most com­fort to your read­ers. If you can move your read­ers, you will get a lot of them.

Are you fol­low­ing these two Truths of Being a Writer? Answer in the comments.

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