Do You Love It?

In which I possibly think possibly deep thoughts. Consider yourselves warned.

So, lately I’ve been rewatching The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.

In the first episode, the main character Midge, having stumbled onto an unexpected interest in stand-up comedy, asks an experienced comic, Lenny Bruce, if he loves what he does.

“Okay, let’s put it like this,” he replies. “If there was anything else in the entire world that I could possibly do to earn a living, I would.”

He then goes on to name a variety of truly awful jobs that I am going to decline to list here. Our intrepid heroine listens to all of this and then asks one more question:

“But do you love it?”

And his response is this:

Because, yeah, he loves it.

Then, toward the end of the series, Midge has hit a bit of a rough patch. She’s feeling stuck and discouraged and doubting herself, her abilities, and whatnot. A friend asks her if she’s ever scared, standing on stage in front of people, and Midge gives the same answer Lenny Bruce gave to her four seasons ago.

“Why do you do it?” another friend asks then.

“Because I love it,” Midge answers.

This has resonated with me of late because I have hit a rough patch. Or possibly never gotten out of one to begin with. Who knows. Whether this is post-publishing depression or imposter syndrome or life in general, or some kind of super fun combination of all of the above, I don’t really know. I just know that I am struggling to do this thing I do.

Writing can be hard. That’s certainly not a mind-blowing revelation for anyone, I know, but yeah. It’s not an easy endeavor. There are absolutely days when the words flow and plot points fall beautifully into place and characters develop just how you want them to, and everything is sunshine and lollipops or whatever. There are days when you spend hours staring out a window while really loud circus music plays on an endless loop in your head because your brain broke while trying to figure out if you need a comma in a particular sentence. There are days that fall somewhere in between.

Publishing can also be hard. Really hard. It’s a lot of work and doesn’t always come with much on the reward side of things. Yes, there are good days. There are bad days. There are really bad days. And let’s not even talk about the hellscape that is marketing. Or how 🤬🤬🤬 AI is making everything just so much harder for authors. I’m already depressed enough.

The point is, there are a lot of days when it feels like you’re stuck, or even moving backwards. There are a lot of days when you wonder if it’s worth it. If it matters. If your time wouldn’t be better spent doing…literally anything else.

And this is pretty much where I’ve been lately. I am stuck. Maybe moving backwards. I don’t know if it’s worth it. I don’t know if it matters. I don’t know if my time wouldn’t be better spent doing…something else. I don’t know if I’ll publish another book. Hell, I don’t know if I’ll even finish any of my unfinished manuscripts.

There is a lot I do not know.

Right now, you may be saying to yourself (provided you made it this far into this rather long post), “Cool story, bro. Is there anything you maybe do know?”

So here is what I do know: This is what I do. And I do it because, deep down, I love it.

Even when it’s hard. Even when it’s discouraging. Even when I just want to crawl under my desk with a pint of Ben & Jerry’s and/or a bottle of Writer’s Tears (IYKYK) and have a good, long cry.

I do it because I want to figure out the story. Even if I am the only one who will ever read it, I still want to solve the puzzle of how it all comes together. Even when it takes a decade (or more) to do so.

I do it because I love crafting sentences and manipulating language to evoke emotion—happy, sad, and everything in between. Even when that involves spending days staring out the window listening to that really loud circus music in my head.

I love creating lives for my characters to live. They have adventures I never will. They occasionally have adventures I would never want to have, as I am occasionally (translation: constantly) quite horrible to them and live in fear of the day they rise up against me and murder me in my sleep.

So, right now, I’m stuck. I don’t know how long I’ll be stuck. It’s happened before. It’s gone away before. It’ll happen again, I’m sure. Unless I never get unstuck this time, I suppose. Then who knows what’ll happen. Besides, nothing, I guess.

But until then…I wait. And do the best I can.

Because I love it.

Even when I hate it.

All right, y’all. That’s my time for today. You’ve been a great audience.

Be safe and well. 💕