The Hidden Value of a Hard Writing Life

The writing life can mess with your head if you let it.

I was reading the comments on one of my recent videos, and though many of them were very positive, there were some that just sounded completely defeated.

Writers were saying things like, “Nobody reads. Nobody helps writers. Publishers are biased. Bookstores don’t care. The whole thing is rigged, so why bother?”

I sat there thinking, how did so many writers get talked into believing that a hard path is the same thing as a pointless one?

Because that belief will crush your writing life if you let it.

So I wanted to show you something that might completely change how you see the struggle that is the writing life, and why the fact that this feels so hard may be the very reason it’s absolutely worth doing.

When the Writing Life Starts Looking Like a Bad Investment

I think a lot of writers believe that this whole thing is about the book. The book, the sales, the deals, the reviews, the rankings, the launch, the proof that all this effort mattered.

And of course those things are important. I’m not pretending that aren’t.

But I think we miss something enormous when we limit the view of our writing lives in this way.

Writing isn’t only about the books you create. In fact, I’d go so far as to say the books you create are almost a side effect.

What this really is about is the person you are becoming while you create these books.

I’ve been a professional writer for over 25 years, and I’ve written and published 10 books so far. So I’m coming at this from a longer point of view. I’m also in my 50s now, and things kind of change when you get to my age because you realize what really matters in life. Some of the surface things that we go after early on become a little less important.

You think you’re trying to build a manuscript here, and you are. But at the same time, day by day, draft by draft, disappointment by disappointment, revision by revision, rejection by rejection, what you’re actually doing is shaping a human life.

Yours.

And that’s not some side issue. That is actually the bigger story.

Two Writers, One Writing Life, Two Very Different Endings

Picture two different writers. Both of them love writing. They both have talent, and they both really want to succeed. So they work hard toward their writing goals.

Often their definition of success involves a lot of outside-world things like sales and awards and money and recognition. So off they go, shooting for those rewards.

They both work hard.

They both run into the same problems writers run into all the time. The draft falls apart. Editorial feedback stings and makes them question everything. The publishing industry feels confusing and overwhelming. They both wonder if they even have a place in it.

They push through. Maybe they publish a book and the sales are disappointing. The readers they so hoped for might be few or far between.

Both writers go through discouragement and exhaustion and even despair, like all writers do.

As a result, one of the writers starts hardening. Every year she gets more resentful and more bitter. And when people ask her about her writing, she explains why nothing works. Nobody cares. The whole industry is biased. People don’t read anyway, so there’s no point trying.

And little by little, without even realizing it, she becomes the kind of person who can no longer be nourished by the very thing she once loved.

Which is writing.

If you compared who she was when she started writing—that eager, wide-eyed person who was full of dreams—to the one she became after years of writing, you would probably say that she had suffered.

But you might also say that she declined.

She got worse. She wasn’t as fun or as creative as she used to be. She just seemed . . . diminished.

The Writing Life That Makes You Stronger

So what about the second writer?

Maybe she goes through all the same hardships. She works her tail off and watches her book get ignored. She cries alone at night over it, maybe. And she wonders if she should just give it all up.

She gets angry at times and thinks about quitting, and she complains to her friends and family about how hard it is. She worries that she’ll never be the writer she wanted to be.

But despite all of that, she keeps coming back.

She picks herself up and dives back in. She gets feedback on her work. She learns how to improve it. She attends workshops and hires a coach. And she stays up late at night studying and improving her skills.

She gets stronger.

She finishes another book and publishes it. Maybe again, it’s mostly ignored, but she gathers a few more readers than she had the first time. She starts an email list. She gets to work on her third book.

Within a few years, half the small bookshelf on her wall holds her own books. Maybe most only sold a few copies, but a later one is doing better than that, and she loves that sense of momentum.

There’s More To It

But looking back over her time writing so far, she realizes there’s more to it than that. There’s more to this writing thing than she ever thought possible.

Because if she’s honest, she’ll have to admit that all the hardships—even the ones that made her want to quit—have required her to earn where she is today.

And the pride that comes from knowing she’s made it this far, that’s something she carries inside her that no one can ever take away.

She knows what it cost to become who she’s become.

And she knows the woman looking at that bookshelf is not the same woman who started her first book years ago.

No matter how many copies of her books sell or don’t, she knows now that what she’s discovered is priceless. It’s priceless! Because it has to do with who she is, not just what she got in return for her work.

My Writing Life Changed Me More Than My Books Ever Could

So, you probably know that second writer is me.

I went through numerous hardships, just like every writer does. Numerous discouragements. Numerous times I thought I should quit.

But with every book that I added to the bookshelf, it wasn’t just that I was creating these books.

It was that these books were creating me.

I can feel it now, the difference in who I am now and who I was 20 or 25 years ago when I started all of this.

A lot of writers ask themselves, “Did I succeed?”

And I get it. It’s the question the world trains us to ask.

How many books did I sell? How much money did I earn? How many readers know my name? How many awards did I win? Did the outside world validate me and my work?

That’s where we’re kind of trained to look.

But as I get older, I realize there’s a deeper question underneath all of that.

Who did I become? Who am I becoming while I chase after this dream? Am I becoming more grounded, disciplined, patient, honest, and courageous? Or am I becoming bitter and angry and suspicious and resentful and defeated?

Because the writing path is shaping you either way.

That’s the part I want you to realize, because I didn’t realize it until I’d been doing this for years.

This isn’t just about the pages you get written.

This is about a life.

Your life.

The Inner Climate of the Writing Life

Let me say this as plainly as I can.

If you treated a plant the way some writers treat themselves, you wouldn’t expect it to grow, right?

You wouldn’t starve it, then yank it up every week to check the roots. You wouldn’t stand over it and call it a failure because it didn’t bloom on your preferred timeline. You wouldn’t compare it all day to the plant next to it and then act shocked when it starts to wither.

That would be ridiculous.

And yet writers do this to themselves constantly.

They feed themselves contempt and panic and defeat and doom and constant comparison and anger and suspicion. Then they wonder why the writing life starts feeling poisoned.

Well, of course it does.

You’re trying to grow something beautiful in a climate of hostility.

And I’m not talking about the book here.

I’m talking about you. Your life. Your personhood.

The Struggle is Real

The outer struggle is real. I’m not denying that. I’ve lived it.

But it’s the inner climate that matters the most.

This is one reason I talk about mindset so much. Writers have to pay attention to it if they want to thrive in this life.

Research on stress mindset, for example, has found that people differ in whether they see stress as mainly debilitating or as something that can also be enhancing. In other words, how you respond to stress can shape what happens next.

There’s also a large body of self-determination theory research showing that people tend to function better when they experience more autonomy and more self-endorsed motivation, rather than feeling pushed around only by outside rewards and pressures.

In other words, the more pride you feel in finishing the work and reaching levels of skill you can control—as opposed to only feeling bitter when the world doesn’t hand you fame and fortune—the more grounded and satisfied your writing life is likely to feel.

What We Don’t Control

The thing is, we can’t control the market.

We don’t control trends, or how much people are reading or not reading. We don’t control the gatekeepers in publishing, or how much effort it takes to bring attention to our work.

The key is how you respond to these things.

How do you interpret them? Do you let them destroy you, or do you choose to find success where you can?

Your choices in this writing life are huge. They are shaping your life.

We’re not in charge of everything. We know that. It’s not up to us who buys the book, whether they like it or don’t, who notices or not, what the industry does next, what happens with AI, or whether the culture suddenly becomes more supportive of reading and writing.

But we are in charge of what kind of person we are becoming on this path.

It’s completely up to us whether this process makes us deeper and stronger human beings, or just makes us smaller and meaner.

You have to choose.

Stronger or more helpless? More faithful or more cynical? More awake or more shriveled?

The longer I live, the more I realize money comes and goes. So does recognition, rewards, and public opinion.

But the person you are becoming stays with you.

The Writing Life Is Shaping a Human Being

When I was growing up, my mom had a saying on the wall. It said,

“Who you are is God’s gift to you. Who you become is your gift to God.”

Whatever definition you may have of God or a higher power, the truth in that statement is powerful.

We were all given the gift of ourselves.

This unique self that wants to create. There’s no one like you in this world. Your mind, your heart, your voice, and your urge to make something out of nothing and then turn around and give it to the world.

Because yes, that part of you that wants to write, that is a gift too.

And perhaps one of the most important things about it is that it helps shape you into a braver, steadier, deeper, more disciplined, more alive human being . . . if you let it.

How can that ever be a waste?

Why This Hard Writing Life May Be the Right One

That brings me to the last part I want to leave you with: Your writing path is supposed to be this hard.

Trust me on this. I’ve been there. And yes, I agree, the struggle is not fun. The industry isn’t fair. Disappointment hurts.

But what would we be without these things? If this were easy, everyone would do it and it wouldn’t be a big deal.

There’s a reason people’s eyes get wide when you tell them you’ve written a book, or two, or three. They have the barest inkling of what an accomplishment that is.

You know it even better. You know what it costs to reach your goals.

But that cost is the proper exchange, not just for the books you create, but for the person you’re becoming.

I hope you do publish. I hope you sell books. I hope your work reaches people and wonderful things happen for you.

But outside any of that, the path of a writer, if you commit to it, has immense value because while you’re writing stories, you’re also shaping a life.

And the closer you get to the end of your life, the more you’re going to understand how precious that is.

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If you’d like more support in this writing life and to learn what you need to finish your book, join us over at Writer’s Brain Studio.

Still not sure whether writing is worth the effort? Check out my book, Your Writing Matters.

_{Featured image by Freepik.}