“I Hate Writing” and Other Lies

“I hate writing” is what I tell almost everyone I meet. It’s the worst. So I was recently talking with my best friend and mentioned something about hating writing and she was like “Well then why do you do it?” 

Good question. 

I told her I thought that every writer hates to write and that I’m not alone. The whole thing upset me. So naturally I went home that night to tell my wife about the conversation and get some validation that I’m not a crazy person. Yeah, no…. It turns out I am a crazy person. 

I spent the night second-guessing everything in my life. If I’m not a writer, what am I? Like, I’ve been doing this for so long. 

The next day I brought it back up to my best friend since I was in a much better headspace. She asked me what I hate about writing. I told her I get so frustrated with the drafting process. She seemed to understand then. I continued to tell her that “writing is the worst and characters are stupid, and it’s a fruitless hobby unless you’re in the lucky 1%. However, I can’t imagine doing anything else.”

That’s when she told me something mind-blowing. She told me I don’t hate writing. Who knew? I think it became a bit of a joke back in film school that we all hated writing even though it was the only thing we wanted to do, and it just kind of stuck. I forgot that not everyone jokes like that. It’s not that I hate to write. I love to write. I know it’s a hobby that might go nowhere (especially if I don’t get my novel rewritten. I’m working on it, okay), but I will have a lot of fun getting there. 

Even now, I’m sitting at a coffee shop drinking a decaf iced latte (sacrilegious I know, but it’s late afternoon and I would like to sleep tonight) listening to the new Arkells album on repeat and writing this, and I’m so happy. I don’t know how I ever could have thought that I hated to write. I love everything about this. I haven’t had a lot of time lately, but I do try to set aside a little bit of time every to work on my book. 

So now I’m wondering if there are any other lies I’ve been telling myself if “I hate writing” is a lie.