3 Reasons Why I Prefer to Write with Friends
Loneliness is Unbearable
It’s incredibly lonely to write alone. You’d think that with all the over romanticization of the depressed, starving artist character that I’d just assume my role as such. And I tried! I tried to be the loner girl staring out of a cafe window in the village, trying to grapple with the vast endlessness of the various worlds presented before me. The city would clamor on beside me their mundane lives filling their time as I walk through worlds, daintily picking bits and pieces of settings, characters, and plots as if they were assorted meats on a tray.
In reality, writing more like arguing with people that don’t exist and arranging planets around a sun that hasn’t been born yet. Writing fiction is hard work. There is only so much your brain and body can handle before it burns out, leaving your soul unsatisfied, desperately wishing for more. I can’t be alone in this. In moments of doubt, I reach for my writer friends, my regular friends, my family, and my coach to help me figure out what it is that I am bringing into this world. Is it an epic tale of a woman coming to age in a world that prefers magic over logic? Or is it a monkey riding a unicorn in a corner (please don’t let it be the monkey)?
2. Constructive Criticism is (Unfortunately) Necessary
In high school, I thought being a writer meant that me and my crippling inability to take constructive criticism would be safe from wandering eyes. Now I want everyone I had a class with to rip my writing apart with the firm but loving hands of someone who knows the same treatment is coming for them.
My writing is t e r r i b l e without edits and even worse without peer edits. I have the tendency to write as if I’m talking to myself, and since I already know what I’m talking about this scene makes perfect sense. When in reality there are too many plot holes to even consider trying to pass it off as a “mystery novel.” So I show my friends my work and they show me theirs. Together we patch up each others’ writing so we don’t look like complete imbeciles at the publisher’s office.
3. A Little Friendly Competition Never Hurt. Much.
Writing in a group is fun. It’s a friendly little game of competition. You’d never say it out loud but she wrote 30 pages in two weeks so I need to write 40 pages in one week so help me God. It’s a great way to stay motivated without the pressure of impressing for a grade. Outside of school, writing is a passion you fulfill for your soul. If you don’t a little more of you dies every day. The torturous agony of a soul death is a much more efficient motivator than a grade. And you get to have coffee with your friends! Right now it’s virtual because NY is in quarantine but you get the point.
If you’d like a second set of eyes on your work, you’re in luck! I offer coaching services for writers. For more information on scheduling and pricing click the Contact Me page here.