author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

Yesterday I blogged about my avoidance behaviors and my anti-avoidance strategies, when really what I meant to blog about was one particular moment in the avoidance/anti-avoidance run-up to revision. That would be the moment when I said to myself, "I should be business-like about my writing! I should treat it like it's a business. It's my job. When web development was my job, did I spend hours avoiding the work because of fear and insecurity? No! I did my job! Writing should be no different."

Which only goes to show that I'm not immune to some of the more toxic memes that plague us. For instance:

Plumbers don't suffer from "plumbers' block."

It's pithy, isn't it? And so self-satisfied. You can top it off with "nuff said," just like putting a cherry on top of a sundae. You could make a motivational poster out of it, with a big black-and-white Hines-like photo of the backside of a plumber hard at work, and attribute it to a well-known grouchy writer, and you could post it to Facebook and get a lot of likes and verbal high-fives.

Some writers no doubt find motivation in such slogans. From time to time, so do I. Sometimes it's exactly what I need to hear; at those times, I say it to myself. I'm not sure I really want to hear anyone say it to me, though. In the transitive case, it becomes a scolding, smug denial of the variety of writers' experiences and vulnerabilities: "The right way to be a writer is my way," it says, and "if you have weaknesses, you ain't no writer." It's all the more toxic for masquerading as a kind of tough-love, "truth hurts" kind of lesson. I mean, yes, the truth can hurt. But the fact of pain doesn't prove the truth of the words that caused it. Lies can hurt, too.

Basically, we're talking about slogans which are used by some writers to assert superiority over other writers. They're dishonest metrics for distinguishing "real writers" from "wanna-bes."

Now, Mur Lafferty has some thoughts about the word "wannabe," and how it really ought to be viewed as a positive term. You gotta want to be before you can be, after all, let alone before you can figure out how to become. And every writer at every level is still a "wannabe," too: they want to be better writers tomorrow than the writers they are today. They want to be the writers who have written the stories that they have yet to write.

But so many people use the word "wanna-be" as a weapon. They believe "wanna-be" and "real writer" are mutually exclusive terms. They say you can either waste time wanting to be a writer, or you can get on with the hard but rewarding work of being a writer. Do, or do not! There is no "try!" Well, Yoda, when you put that way, it almost sounds reasonable... except it leads to the poisonously backwards conclusion that "wanting" precludes "becoming," when in fact wanting precedes becoming. It's a necessary prerequisite.

Shaming wanna-be writers for wanting to be writers sure turns this whole "wanna-bes never amount to anything" nonsense into a self-fulfilling prophecy, doesn't it?

And how do these smug border guards with their weaponized words distinguish real writers from wanna-bes? Easy, they say. Look, real writers don't believe in writers' block. Real writers don't truck with "resistance" and "avoidance" and other excuses not to write; they just write. Real writers don't take weekends or holidays. Real writers know that writing is a job like any other job. You sit down at your desk and you do it. Plumbers don't get plumbers' block; they just get on with plumbing!

Except, in very important ways, writing fiction isn't like plumbing.

Don't get me wrong. It's important to get on with the writing despite fear, uncertainty, doubt, lack of inspiration, not knowing what to write, and all those other things that are implicated by the term "writers' block." This is why I am accumulating a toolbox of anti-avoidance strategies.

But all of those strategies depend on realizing in the first place that the fears, uncertainties, etcetera are valid. They aren't things that only wanna-bes (to use the term in its weaponized sense) experience. They don't preclude being a writer. To a varying extent across the fiction-writer population, they kind of come with the territory.

This is getting long again. So, two final summary-style thoughts before I tuck the rest of my thoughts away for tomorrow:

1. Fear isn't a sign of failing. Fear means what you're trying to do is important to you. (Thank you, Havi Brooks.)
2. Reclaim "wanna-be" as a term of pride! Disarming those who would use it as a weapon!