3 Writing Challenges I Have Faced
Why did nobody warn me?
Despite my previous work experience and achievements, I define myself only as a person who writes. Yes, I have already worked as a journalist on several websites and a copywriter in the marketing department of a large company. I even added these positions to my Linkedin profile. I have to comply with the rules, do not I? But I feel restricted when people ask me to introduce my profession: journalism or copywriting cannot completely satisfy my writing ambition. Maybe, it is one of the reasons why I registered on Medium.
Before publishing this post, I read many stories highlighting the writing process. Honestly, I am impressed with Medium authors’ gentle attitude to writing. It seems to me that I have dived into another dimension where people support each other and beginners are not afraid of criticism.
However, every writer faces many challenges beyond Medium. I would like to tell you about the ones that have affected me.
Belittlement
Thanks to social media, we can write everything we want and find our audience without restrictions. That is cool, but sometimes society belittles people who have defined writing as a career. For example, my acquaintance told me that writing was rubbish and every fool could do it. I assume that the journalists who worked for newspapers in the first half of the 20th century did not have a similar experience. They got an exclusive right to publish and communicate with an audience. Ultimately, they competed only among themselves. Nowadays, journalism does not give you an advantage: a modern writer must fight for the reader’s attention with Netflix and Tik Tok.
Admit it: people value exclusivity and hard-to-reach things. They think that writing is an effortless skill because it does not demand expert knowledge or expertise with specialized software and technologies. But if so many people are good at writing, why do I spend time looking for meaningful texts?
Not eternal holiday
Do you believe writing is elemental magic appearing like a genie from a lamp? If I were Severus Snape, I would say, “I teach you how to bottle inspiration, ensnare readers’ senses, and even put a stopper on procrastination”. But my Hogwarts letter has not arrived yet, so I still must make efforts to write a simple text which will be understandable both for an elementary school student and a professor. I do not say about writing a fiction book that requires time-consuming research and regular work for months.
If Stephen King had waited for the muse, we would not have read “The Shining”, “It” and “The Green Mile”. He writes 10 pages a day because it is his work.
Writing style change
Life has forced me to switch writing styles several times. When I studied at school, I used to write long sentences which consisted of pretentious words. I wanted to make an impression on my literature teacher, and I succeeded in this deal. But I did not know a precise definition of these words.
When I worked as a news journalist, I rejected descriptive adjectives and uninformative sentences. Beauty does not matter if you create a boring headline. But when I changed a career and began to create content for social media, my colleagues were talking that my style was too formal and journalistic.
Now I am learning how to tell powerful stories on Medium. It is a double challenge. Firstly, I will write in English, which is not my native language. Secondly, the Medium audience differs from the one I used to deal with. Thus, I should rethink my content strategy. I hope I will cope with it.
Although belittlement makes me upset, and my writing productivity is far from Stephen King’s fastness, I continue to write. Why? It is my way of communicating with the world and exploring it. Writing helps me organize thoughts, express feelings, and appreciate my past through present views. If I did not write, I would go crazy.
And what about you? What writing challenges do you often face? Please, share your experience in the comments.
