I've caught myself approaching writing as a Writer (yes with a capital W) far too often. Do you do this, too?

A Writer is focused on their ideas more than the story. End results are the goal. This Writer has starry-eyed visions of glitzy literary parties and bestsellerdom. For the Writer, writing itself is an act of ego rather than a journey of curiosity. The Writer is, let's be honest, rather self-important.

You might be thinking, "Well, actually, I'm pretty humble. This isn't me." And maybe that's true. Maybe.

The Writer with a capital W approaches writing as a performance. This Writer is easily discouraged because their early sentences and first drafts are chaotic and don't resemble something that could ever be up for a literary prize much less grace a bestseller list. The Writer gives up because the process of writing stands in the way of the imagined payout.

I, the sometimes Writer, was encouraged this week listening to Brad Listi and Steve Almond talk about this topic. (YouTube / Apple Podcasts / Spotify) If you also find yourself even a tiny bit in the Writer camp (maybe you're simply blocked or distracted by other writers' careers), what can you do to launch yourself out of it?

Here are three takeaways from this conversation:

1. Writers who make it care more about story than being a Writer.

2. If you want to be a writer, find the rewards in the process because the results are not in your control.

Focus on the work of bringing your story fully, enticingly to the page. "It's worth studying the mechanisms of enthrallment," Almond says. I like that!

3. One of the keys for getting over writer's block is to lower the bar.

As a writer, you have excellent tastes in reading, and it's a disappointment when your own work doesn't measure up to your tastes. Set this aside for now and start small. Let excellence be a thing you worry about later.

💡 Curiosity, deep interrogation about your story and the characters that live within it, a surrender to and enjoyment of the process--as rigorous and exasperating as it can be--that's what will help you produce your best work. Keep going.

May I Recommend?

Things that I've read this week that may interest and inspire you, too:

Put on Your Dog Bonnet Writer and The Best American Short Stories series editor Heidi Pitlor discusses revision and how to get through it. Read more​

Yael van der Wouden Wants to Touch Everything The novelist on how she became a writer (her debut, The Safekeep, is shortlisted for the Booker) and on writing a great sex scene. Read more​

• ​What memoirist Karen DeBonis learned when she tried a new strategy to get her memoir noticed by book review websites.
• ​Stephanie Duncan Smith on excavating your book's aboutness. (Duncan Smith is a senior editor at HarperOne.)
• ​This interview with Elizabeth Strout. "I’ve always been fascinated with this sense that every single person walking down the street has a whole story."

Wishing you a good writing week ahead ✨

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