The Struggle Every Writer Knows All Too Well

At a very young age, we were often asked what we wanted to be when we grow up. We told them our fantasies, and made ourselves believe that it was an easy path. But we fell in love. We fell deeply in love with words. We started to be fascinated with the power of how words can inspire. We suddenly learned to appreciate everything around us, as we believed that every single detail is worth writing about. We started to create our own world and put into words the beauty that captivated us.

But we realized the painful reality that writing was, is, and will never be an easy path. We felt as if there’s no way to effectively describe how we feel, and that desperation for exhaustion kept us prisoned in our own ideas.

We constantly battled with deadlines and how it feels like traumatic dead ends. We denied every time we are diagnosed with a bad case of writers’ block. Our hunger for words suddenly turned into a scavenge hunt for inspiration. Suddenly, our exquisitely written sentences turned into awfully fragmented thoughts — and it killed us.

Slowly we will learn to accept that writing is a pilgrimage on finding the missing piece to complete the puzzle. We have to admit to ourselves that we have to live with its unexpected twists and turns, and learn to digest every word like as if we’re making love with it. We will understand that our relationship with writing is not perfect, but it will continue to deepen as we slowly realize why we write.

We will know why we struggle, it will make us understand that writing will never be easy, but it will always be beautiful; it will always be hard, but it will just keep us going. Most of all it will make us realize why we write, because despite all the ups and downs, we continue to string into sentences the beauty of life—we write.