A Candid Narrative about Stress in the Life of a Writer

Jonathan Smith // Blog Writer

The first time I ever presented my fiction writing in a workshop setting was my junior year of high school. I remember the feeling of excitement and simultaneous anxiety as time moved closer toward the last period of the day. The story was about burritos. A man, who had failed at jump-starting his writing career, turned to a Mexican restaurant for employment. Goofy anecdotes and a general over-glorification of burritos flowed through every page. Everyone in my class loved it. In retrospect, it’s probably one of the worst stories I’ve ever written.

But that’s all part of the process. There were many things I didn’t understand about fiction writing at the time. I figured if I could make people laugh, maybe put a smile on their face, then I would be all set. Story written. The end. All done. But I couldn’t have been more wrong. A story needs fascinating characters, atmosphere, tension, a new way of looking at life, or some mixture of these and other elements in order to be worth telling. When I started diving deeper into the craft, I realized that all of the stories I grew up reading are actually a lot harder to create than appears on the page.

Deadlines have and always will be the bane of existence for writers. I often experience writer’s block at the worst possible moments (e.g. the night before a short story is due). The good news is that once I get on a certain pattern of thought, it’s easy to let the words spill out. Working on multiple projects at once has also proven beneficial as it allows for placing one story in the back of the mind while juggling a new objective. Sometimes all writers need is a break in order to revisit a piece from a brand new lens.

It is often difficult to subject a short story or another piece of writing to critique, especially if it relates to a topic that’s rather personal. Or, if a story is about a dark topic and the narrator says something out of line, people might think of the author differently. It makes sense. But it should never deter anyone from creating the story they need to tell. This is the main concept I’ve learned since beginning college workshop classes.

I’ve grown rather comfortable in terms of sharing my work with people whom I have never met before. This has been achieved in a variety of ways, but the most helpful method has been sharing work with my friends and family before presenting it to other readers. My friends and family often give a partisan view of my work and tell me how great it is, which is a system equipped with perks and flaws, but can lessen the blow if someone goes on to judge it harshly. Sometimes those harsh comments are exactly what I—and other writers—need to hear.

I haven’t found the perfect mixture of the aforementioned elements in my stories. I still need to create more tension to give them an added meaning. My characters still need to be tweaked in order to make them as real and unique as possible. Sometimes I veer away from the main topic of the story too much. But I’ve seen major progression since I wrote that burrito story way back when.

The most nerve-wracking aspect of being a writer is the worry of whether I’ll get published, whether I’ll get a job in the industry after I walk across the stage at graduation. Almost all of my classmates have expressed concern in this area as well. It’s unsettling to think that art school is one ineffable risk because—just like most other colleges—it costs mounds of cash. The purpose of art is not to make money; the purpose of art is to figure out what this thing is that we call life. It’s an exploration. It’s easy to think about art for its monetary value instead of its personal value. But art is so much more than a business.