The Pitfalls of Writing About Writing

Authors love to write. There is one thing they love to do more, arguably… and that is to write about writing.

We’re pretty bad about it in person, too. The fastest way to lose a half hour of your life is to ask an author to talk about the craft of writing. We’ll drone on endlessly about the topic because we truly do love it. The problem is, all authors suffer from three major conceits.

First, we believe that everyone thinks writing is as important as we think it is. Second, we will be truly self-indulgent with our own writing if nobody stops us. Third and finally, we as authors often think we’re much more significant in the world and to other people than we truly are. This is not to say that other people don’t share these conceits. It’s just that we tend to be pretty bad about these, specifically among writing circles. Heck, look at any book or screenplay in which the lead character is a writer. You’ll quickly see how we see ourselves, and sometimes, it’s very self-important.

The result is that many authors, even beginning authors, like to blog about writing. They love to tell other people what they think, so they’ll devote time on social media to post about writing (because this is preferable to trying to find a captive audience in a Starbucks or elsewhere). What all this writing about writing does is burn time that you should be spending writing.

“But I am writing when I write about writing,” you might protest.

That doesn’t count. Only writing productive output counts. Instead of blogging or posting about writing, spend your writing time actually getting farther in the project on which you’re working. If not that, then spend that time working out character notes, or plot notes, or world-building notes, or anything else that furthers your goals. Keep a notebook of ideas, titles, character thoughts, and anything else you might want to write down. But whatever you do, don’t give in to writing about writing.

You’re still going to do it. We all do. I’m just urging you to keep it to a minimum whenever possible. The worst offenders are beginning authors who start writing blogs about success as an author when they’ve not yet experienced success themselves. Nobody’s saying you can’t be optimistic, and nobody’s saying your advice doesn’t have value… but before you see yourself as an authority on writing, maybe you should actually get some work published first.

Mostly, though, I’m arguing that your time spent writing should be focused on a productive end goal and not just navel-gazing. Writing about writing may be interesting and may make us feel good, but it isn’t going to pay the bills. Devote yourself to things that will produce revenue eventually, even if that’s getting another chapter done in your novel. You’d be surprised just how much time to produce you reclaim when you stop writing about writing… and start writing to write.