Things Writers Worry About
We worry about the empty page, and the words that will eventually come to fill it. We worry more that the words will not come, that they will be on vacation or else preoccupied with other matters, on dates or working lunches with other writers, and that our empty pages will remain empty.
We worry about the time spent filling the page, that the choices between words and phrases and metaphors have right answers, and that we will inevitably choose the wrong ones. We worry that the stories and arguments and exposés that we care so passionately about will not be well-served because we are tired or ill-educated or incompetent.
We worry about where to start and where to end. Which image will arrest the largest number of pairs of eyes? we worry. Which closing sentence will leave those eyes wide and quiet and thoughtful, filled with the beauty of ideas and the inexhaustible profundity of just the right questions? We worry about the middles, too, the things bookended by the first words and the last, but the greatest amount of worry is spent on the beginning of the marathon and the finish line.
We worry that once the page is filled, that we won’t know how to file, whittle, and buff that page into something beautiful. We worry that it won’t be properly distilled into it’s truest, most nourishing form. We worry that the alchemy of editing is beyond us, that perfection will forever remain a step beyond reach of our red pens.
We worry that no one will want our mostly perfected child, that there will be no one to listen to what she has been created to say. We worry that she is irrelevant, and that therefore we are irrelevant. We worry that once we place her in the middle of the town square to cry her message, that no one will stop to hear — or worse: they’ll hear a portion, but continue on their way.
We worry that no one will value our talents enough to trade money for them, that we will live and die in a vacuum of literary poverty. We worry that if no one pays for our words, that means they have no inherent value. We worry about “making it.” We worry about agents and publishers and website editors, and what monetary limits they’ll place on our pieces. We worry about getting back “enough,” and then wonder what is enough?
But we worry most that the one person our writing was meant to reach will never find it, that we will not have touched them with the gentle caress of shared experience. We worry that the impact we leave will be in page impressions and ad revenue instead of tears and smiles and earnest nods of the head. We worry that our work will be completed, but that it will not matter because it never found its soulmate, the one person who will hold it tenderly with gratitude and love.
Full of worry, we sit down. Full of words, we write.
