Maybe some suffering is necessary for some things to happen. Take childbirth. Sure you can get an epidural but in order for someone to be born, it’s got to hurt at least a little, or it does under normal circumstances. I don’t know exactly why this is.
Shouldn’t there be a little bit of pain, albeit of a different kind to give birth to an arrangement of words?
Right now I’m working on a novella and yesterday I procrastinated. I spent literally hours whining about how hard it is to write and whaaaa I don’t wanna. Cause I didn’t know what to say and was afraid I’d screw it up.
The first 100 words were like pulling teeth, but then story just “arrives.” I had an outline but suddenly I’m getting backstory, and minor characters and an image of where all this is taking place and we’re rolling along happily. Happily to the tune of 5,000 words. Thank you very much. 
But maybe I jinxed myself and today is the universe’s way of mocking me for having a relatively pain free writing day. Because today I sat down thinking, if I just trust the process, it’ll just flow, like magic. So I didn’t procrastinate for hours.
I’m up to 2,066 words for today and most of them have been like trying to steal the constitution (yeah I saw that movie.) I’ve had to continually tell myself…”write crap now…fix it later.” And “It’s okay to headhop in the crap draft, I’ll fix it later.” These reassurances are the only things keeping my fingers punching the keys like a well-trained but slightly neurotic monkey.
So it makes me wonder…is there a necessary level of “writer suffering” and angst necessary to bring forth a piece of creative writing? Whether you suffer through hours of procrastination or slowly eek out the words, squeezing the blood from the proverbial turnip with each one. I’m not sure.
The one thing I do know is…at the end of a writing day after reaching quota one is in a state of euphoric bliss, I’m told it’s similar to childbirth in that, afterwards you forget the pain. My quota for today is still 5,000. But I’m taking a break to go to IHOP with my husband and will have to put off the euphoria til I reach my word goal.
Tomorrow I’ll once again sit down at the computer, adorably naive as ever.
