This image got quite a few upvotes on r/writing today:
At first glance it seems to be a nice lighthearted look at the writing process, but images like this annoy me no end.
They come up from time to time, alongside posts talking about how much time people spend thinking or talking about writing instead of writing and seem to be accepted as what writing is like. That someone a lot of your time ‘writing’ is in-fact meant to be spent not actually writing and that is okay.
Fuck that shit frankly.
If you are spending time staring at a blank page instead of writing, that is your problem.
If you do something else instead of writing when you know you should, that is your problem.
If you procrastinate instead of writing, that is your problem.
If you accept that most of your time ‘writing’, isn’t actually going to be spent writing then that is your fucking problem.
No one is going to write the words for you. No magical force is going to creep inside your computer and make your book magically appear whilst you sleep.
The person in control of how you spend your time, and how your writing process works is you.
If your time writing isn’t spend either getting words down or editing them, or thinking about your story or a bit of time on the business side of things, you are doing it wrong. So horrifically wrong you are failing as writer. Because a writer is someone who writes. They don’t talk about writing, or moan about what is distracting them from writing, they just motherfucking write.
No one is going to force you to do this, you have to make yourself. If you are going to be a writer you are going to sit your arse down and you are going to write the words.
So shut up and write, finish what you start, and then you can be a writer.