I remember when I finished my first novel. As I typed The End across the bottom of the very last chapter, I felt a myriad of emotions: pride, a little bit of sadness (it’s always hard to say goodbye), and most importantly of all, an overwhelming sense of achievement for it was the first novel I actually completed.

Sure, I’ve started a few novels over the years but like most of my projects, they all languished in my hard drive in their unfinished states, which is unfortunate because some of them were genuine gems. I have a novel called Come Springtime for example, which I started writing when I was 17. It was going great—the beginning was promising, the characters appropriately moody yet introspective (very literary chic), and to top it off, it dealt with very important themes such as existential crises and the broken political system—when the dreaded third chapter syndrome (if it wasn’t a thing before, it is now) struck. I thought I had a literary classic on my hands…

Then it all went to shit, and I reluctantly abandoned it.

There’s a saying in my dialect that describes a snake with a head but no tail, which means you never finish what you start, and that was precisely what it was—I start plenty of projects but never finish them! And for a long time, I’ve always blamed that on my writer’s block, so when I finally finished this one, I thought my writer’s block had come to an end. In many ways, it has. But the fears behind that writer’s block have not, and without realising it, have continued to work behind the scenes to make sure that some of that terrible block remains.

When did it start, I wonder?

In my girlhood days, I had plenty of ideas. I had so much I used to keep a journal full of them so that when I had the time to devote to writing, I could pluck one up and furnish it into a fully fleshed story. And I did. My only problem was I had too many ideas and a limited attention span and once I lost interest in a particular idea, I promptly abandoned it for another one.

This worked well for a while since I had an abundance of them, and I wasn’t too worried about the “snakes with heads but no tails,” because being 10, I had plenty of time! If I was published within a 10-year timeframe, I’d still be young! I held onto that belief as I transitioned from prepubescent child to stressed out teenager, and the ideas started to wane a bit. Not enough to worry me, but enough to put my publishing dreams on hold as I was now too busy with schoolwork and exams. But I was still young! I still had plenty of time, or so I thought.

Then I learned that authors don’t earn a lot of money at all.
That’s fine, I reasoned to myself. I don’t write for the money anyway.
Then I learned that publishing is a long and arduous process.
I can deal with that, I reasoned again. As long as my writing is the best as I can make it, it’ll happen eventually. Hopefully when I’m still young.

Then I learned that it was considerably harder for minorities to break into the publishing world.

That put a stop in my momentum for a moment, I’ll admit. But I wasn’t going to give up now, especially after realising just how much we need more minority voices. Besides, it’ll be easier in the future, right? We’ll be more progressive, right?

Then I learned that nobody reads printed books anymore.

That’s okay, I thought, this time a little less assuredly. I can self-publish!

As that went on, the well of ideas started drying up until it became a sickly stream amidst a rubble of brick and dust. But I had just started uni and had to adjust to living in a new environment and navigating the college world. Eventually that stream trickled into nothingness and by the time I graduated, the dreaded writer’s block had set in.

Great.

Nobody reads printed books anymore, and if they still did they weren’t going to read one written by a minority, and if by some miracle I managed to publish a book I can’t even live off it!

That’s it, I decided, my dream is unsustainable. I’m already in my twenties and if I’m even lucky enough to be published by 30, I’ll be of normal age and therefore, not a prodigy. I should just look for a job. Disheartened with the prospect of having my childhood dream crushed, that’s exactly what I did.

Then I found out most jobs require a ridiculous amount of work experience, even entry level jobs, and did a year’s stint of volunteering just so I could get that experience. I had wanted to work in high school but my parents dissuaded me, saying my education was more important because once I got my degree, companies would be lining up to hire me. Boy, were they wrong! That might’ve been how it worked in my parents’ generation, but with the economic downturn and rapidly rising inflation of today’s world, a simple bachelor’s degree just isn’t gonna cut it.

By the time I stopped, I realised I didn’t want to work an ordinary job. What I wanted to do was write. So I tried to write again, but when I did, I couldn’t. All I could do was stare at the blank page on the computer as my mind froze, and that kept happening year after year, no matter what tricks I employed to get my creative juices running again—and I tried a lot of them! By then, I realised something had changed. The act of writing, which had once been such a joy that came easily to me in the past, was now a source of pain and discomfort. Not only that, but it was considerably harder too. And I was lost once again.

Is this really what I wanted to do for the rest of my life? I wondered. Is this still my dream?

As it turns out, yes! I could imagine myself as nothing but a writer, even if the fear overwhelmed me. Even if ideas eluded me. Even if my writer’s block wouldn’t budge. I just loved it too much to give it up, and I was even more sure that I wanted to become a writer when I eventually finished my first novel (the snake finally has a head and a tail!). I wanted it so much I thought it would be easier the second time around.

It wasn’t.

Writing the second book was even more painful than the first. The first one I wrote to distract myself, the second one I wrote because I wanted to. And perhaps, that’s where the problem lay. Because I had written the first book as a diversion from some terrible emotions, I didn’t care how it turned out. I started it fully intending for it to be crappy. I never counted on myself falling in love with it near the middle, and certainly not missing the characters after I wrote the end, and I never intended to write a sequel or two.

Except… that’s precisely what happened.

I did fall in love with my characters. I wanted to continue their journey. And most importantly, I wanted to write to the best of my abilities. The perfectionism that never existed for the first story was out in full force for the second. Yet I still managed to finish that one too.

Okay, it’s going to get easier for sure now that I have more experience (and more success), I thought.
I was wrong.
The third novel ended up being harder to write than both the first and second novels combined. And maybe that’s because I expected so much out of it, I expected instant perfection from my writing.

Guess what that led to? Yep, you got it—loathing.

I’ve always found it odd that the first novel was such a breeze, but upon looking back, it probably wasn’t as easy as I remembered it to be either. My text messages show otherwise. In fact, a friend wisely pointed out I was just as stressed with the first one as I was with the second one, and I guess I must’ve been because I’ve been bombarding him with my frustrations.

I wonder then, why it feels so much harder now. Considering I have two completed novels under my belt, why is it still so hard for me to write? And the only conclusion I can come up with is this: while the writer’s block is gone, the fears behind it aren’t.

What are the fears?

• The fear of never-ending poverty?
• The fear of criticism?
• The fear of my voice being supressed once again?
• The fear of having gone through all that with nothing to show for it?
• The fear that perhaps, just perhaps, the notion of meritocracy was wrong?

We were all raised to believe that if we worked hard at something, we would taste the fruits of success. But what if that’s not true? What if we’ve worked hard our whole lives only to taste the bitterness of failure? And what if it’s this fear of failure, this need to believe in a meritocratic society that’s driving me to hold onto my dreams so much?

I don’t know.

All I know is I love writing yet fear it at the same time. I feel an incredible rush of joy when I get it right yet a bitter torrent of anguish when I don’t. I expect perfection in first drafts, yet I dislike planning. I’m probably in the unhealthiest relationship with my writing, but unlike a terrible lover, I refuse to let it go. My writing has become such a huge part of me that to lose it is akin to losing myself, so I have to find a way to make it work.

I don’t believe in ridding ourselves of our fears. I don’t think it works. What I do think however, is we can live with our fears in a way that’s more beneficial to us, and to control them so they don’t run our lives. After all, only a foolish person knows no fear. Anyone who says otherwise is lying 😉

I’m probably also coming from a place of fear when I write, not a place of love. With my financial situation being the way it is, I kind of depend on my writing to give me some form of income, and that’s causing me great stress. And we all know creativity doesn’t bode well in an environment of stress, so I have to manage my stress better.

Audiences are another thing entirely, and I know I tend to let a hypothetical audience define the contents of my work. This wasn’t a problem I faced with my first novel because as I’ve said, I didn’t write that one for anybody else but me. I was the only one who would read it, I was the only one who could cast judgement, and since I was so miserable anyway, any writing sufficed as long as it entertained and distracted.

But now that I’m considering publishing, I’ve been plagued by thoughts of “not good enough” yet I’m too paralysed to take the appropriate action, which is to relentlessly edit. Then I start to hate myself for not taking the obvious course of action, of being stuck once again, of being mired in fear. And on and on it goes.

I guess what I want to say is I have a love/hate relationship with writing.

Well, I used to feel like a fraud for feeling this way and even now I still do, especially when I see other writes enthusiastically get down to the business of writing. Most people think you have to love your hobbies 100% to be able to put up with the difficulties, and the journey of the writer is indeed rife with difficulties, but I think you have to have enough passion to carry you, even if it’s only 90% or 80%. More importantly, you have to have thick skin and even thicker blood, because you’re going to be your own toughest critic.

But even with all the fear and loathing, I still love writing. I truly do. And that, for me, is enough.

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