Finding the joy in writing

 For the last couple of weeks I've been feeling a little less than 100%.  It's only a minor cold, the sort of thing that robs you of your energy and makes everyday things a struggle.

I've found that posts on social media annoyed me more during this time.  It seems that there's been a larger-than-usual number of people gleefully announcing their representation by an agent, or the sale of a short story to a prestigious magazine.

For writers struggling to break through into publication, these glee fests are always difficult to take.  I frequently see writers I follow on Twitter taking a break from the site to avoid this constant evidence of others' success.

The truth is that these successes are the tiny visible part at the top of the iceberg.  The other seven-eighths of it consists of those writers receiving the same huge number of rejections and suffering the same bouts of despair as me.

In some ways I'm lucky, because I've never suffered from depression.  Rejections will make me grumpy for days, and have me despairing that I'll ever break down the doors of Fortress Publishing, but that's as far as the darkness goes.  I'm more likely to suffer rage from a rejection than be depressed by it.

But there's no denying that there are times when the disappointment and anger get too much.  These are usually the days when I've waited three months for a response to a story submission.  I'm just beginning to hope that the story got past the slush reader to the second round of judging when slam! in come the rejections.  And when you get three of these long-outstanding rejections on the same day it's a recipe for a really bad dose of the grumps.

Sometimes when I feel like this I wonder why I keep going.  And the answer is for the joy of writing.  I can't imagine not being a creative person.

On the best writing days, when I've dropped into flow, I'm a channel for a flood of ideas to move through me, through my pen, onto the page.  The best of these sessions have me writing things that I didn't consciously plan.  I might suddenly get an insight into why a character thinks that way, or uncover a piece of backstory I didn't know they had.

This is what keeps me going.  The joy of writing is spending a morning putting words on paper.  Creating a rich new world and fascinating characters who didn't exist when I got up that morning.

Ultimately it's that fascination with the magic of creation and the joy it brings which keeps me going.