{"id":3104,"date":"2025-10-01T08:11:19","date_gmt":"2025-10-01T08:11:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.judithcranswick.co.uk\/?p=3104"},"modified":"2025-10-01T08:11:19","modified_gmt":"2025-10-01T08:11:19","slug":"is-it-worth-all-the-pain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.judithcranswick.co.uk\/?p=3104","title":{"rendered":"Is it worth all the pain?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Last week I received an email from a writer friend who I\u2019ll call Emily (not her real name). I\u2019ve known Emily for a long time when she was a member of a writing group we held in my house. We lost touch when she married and moved away but met up again four years ago. In the intervening period she had written and self-published several novels and to help promote them she joined our local writers\u2019 support group.<\/p>\n

Her email was to tell me that she was leaving the group because she had decided to give up writing altogether. It was a painful read. She wrote – \u201cThis isn’t a knee-jerk decision, more that I realised the work does not outweigh the fruit. I’ve hardly been able to write anything worthy for months, and receiving the edit back on my next book was simply the last straw\u2026 I haven’t the energy to work out if the edit suggestions are right or bother with the work if they are. There doesn’t seem any point in putting myself through it when only a handful of people will read it. I know I don’t write for other people, but it is pointless if I have lost my joy for it.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Every writer who has put pen to paper will feel her sense of utter hopelessness. I thought long and hard about what to say. There was absolutely no point in telling her we all feel that same despair at some point with every novel we write. Whenever I give talks on writing to local WI, Rotary Club, U3A, etc groups, I always compare writing a novel to having a baby \u2013 it takes 9 months plus to nurture, often with bouts of morning sickness when it doesn\u2019t go well. The birth itself is painful beyond belief leaving you with the same resolve never to put yourself through that again. But like giving birth to a child, your newly published book is your pride and joy and you soon forget all the heartache you went through until you go into labour again.<\/p>\n

What Emily was feeling was far more than the usual anguish that comes with the editor\u2019s report we all know so well. This wasn\u2019t just a question of putting the whole thing on one side and getting on with something else for a couple of weeks until you can face it again. All I could do was be there for her. Ask her to come round for a coffee.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>She\u2019s been on my mind all week. I feel her pain. I haven\u2019t hit her depths, but I am in despair at my latest book. Last week I finished the first draft of my last effort. To say that the last couple of months have been hard work is something of an understatement. It\u2019s been the most painful writing experience I\u2019ve had with any of my novels so far \u2013 I\u2019ve changed my ideas so many times, changing murderers, turning bad characters into good ones and vice versa, that now I\u2019ve no idea of whether the whole thing makes sense and who knows what when. I was complaining about it to my daughter (always my first editor who never pulls her punches \u2013 it always needs a major rewrite when it comes back from her.) She said to send it to her as is . Normally I would never discuss the plot except in general terms let any one read it before I’d done at least 4 rewrites and honed it to be as good as I can make it. I can\u2019t bear the thought of going through it again, so I\u2019ve sent it as is. I am not even going to think about it for at least a month. I\u2019ve had a lazy week doing what all writers should do \u2013 read. We rarely get periods where we can take an afternoon off and just read without feeling guilty that we should be doing something else.<\/p>\n

We all want to produce the very best we can do \u2013 not just churn out the word count. For all you writers who are feeling the pain at the moment, you are in my prayers.<\/p>\n

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Last week I received an email from a writer friend who I\u2019ll call Emily (not her real name). I\u2019ve known Emily for a long time when she was a member of a writing group we held in my house. We lost touch when she married and moved away but met up again four years ago. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,21,11],"tags":[81,239],"class_list":{"0":"post-3104","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-general-interest","7":"category-marketing-2","8":"category-writing","9":"tag-editor","10":"tag-first-draft","11":"entry","12":"has-post-thumbnail"},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.judithcranswick.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3104"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.judithcranswick.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.judithcranswick.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.judithcranswick.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.judithcranswick.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3104"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.judithcranswick.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3104\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3108,"href":"https:\/\/www.judithcranswick.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3104\/revisions\/3108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.judithcranswick.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.judithcranswick.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.judithcranswick.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}