When Writing Becomes Work

With the end of the semester quickly approaching, I’ve been working more and more on my final projects, all of which are focused on writing. Now that I’m spending seven or eight hours a night doing nothing but writing, I’ve started to wonder at what point this writing stops being fun or even bearable and becomes work.

I’m happy to say that most of the writing I’m doing is still pretty fun for me, even though my combined workload comes out to over 200 pages. After I got over my initial panic, my screenplay has been steadily coming along. The hard parts are over (I hope). Even my two research papers aren’t truly work–they’re on topics I enjoy and am interested in, so even though they each involve hours of research and writing, it’s bearable.

Surprisingly, my creative writing class has become the one most burdensome–the writing itself is fine, but my professor requires additional edits and self-analysis to be done for each story. It’s difficult, and I don’t feel I have enough time at the moment to devote to editing, but it has to be done.

So it seems what I’ve decided is that writing becomes work when it’s extra–additional revisions, feedback from professors that isn’t necessarily encouraging, papers that take longer than they should. This is the work.

Of course, as we all know, these are some of the most essential parts of the writing process. Writing is the fun part, and in most cases revising is not (especially when it’s on someone else’s terms). But it’s important and required. This work is good.

So that’s what I’m reminding myself as I type nonstop, as I wonder whether I’m getting carpal tunnel or if I’m getting sore from sitting too long. All of this work is making my writing better.