Write Anyway

Occasionally, I see writers asking in online forums or whatever if they’re good enough to write, if they can write, and so forth. My standard answer is yes, you can write. There is no such thing as not being good enough to write. Of course, some folks can write better than others, and it’s not that ability doesn’t make a difference, but there are so many other variables involved that you really shouldn’t worry about it.

If you want to write, write. Give it a shot.

Do the best you can, work on getting better, and get help if you can. Everybody needs help, no matter how good they are. And everyone can get better, no matter how rough their work might be in the beginning.

Some people, though, have a more specific reason for worrying about whether they can write — challenging circumstances (like young children at home and no free time) or disabilities or some combination of the two can really give a person reason to wonder how they could possibly fulfill a dream of writing.

I could provide a simple answer: my most important writing teacher as an adult was dyslexic (a learning disability whose name almost literally means “trouble writing”), and my first developmental editor was blind, and if they can do it, so can you!

Sorry, excuse me while I go gag on that oversimplified treacle.

Yes, they did it, and so have lots of other people who face serious obstacles, and yes, that is reassuring to know, but at the same time, obstacles are real. I face some myself, including difficulties with time management and focus that are, at times, serious. When I’m doing well, everything’s fine, and I can tell myself and everybody else that I’ve cracked the code, figured everything else, I can handle it now. And then something will come up, things will get less fine, and there I am climbing the walls, metaphorically speaking, worrying that maybe I’m just fundamentally broken as a person.

I get it.

The thing is that obstacles are real, difficulties are difficult, and the fact that you probably can write despite whatever makes things hard for you won’t make things magically not hard. The popular narrative of how So-and-So didn’t let such-and-such get in the way of their dreams is, by and large, BS. Nobody lets anything get in the way of their dreams. Sometimes life just gets in the way anyway.

So your indomitable will won’t make your day have more hours in it, won’t make disability or illness go away, won’t give you the fabled “room of your own” if you haven’t got one.

But there are work-arounds, and you can find them or make them and learn how to use them to make writing a little more possible than it was before. And that might be enough.

I’m not going to try to offer advice on how to transcend every possible problem. First of all, I don’t know how to transcend every possible problem. There are days I can barely manage mine. Also, there are a lot of possible problems out there, and this article would get very long if I tried to address all of them, even if I could.

So I’ll just say —

If you want to write, write. Don’t worry about whether you’re good enough, but never think you’re too good to need help, either.

And if something is getting in your way, try anyway. Figure out a work-around. Find community with other people like you, and find out how they do it. There is a way through.