What is that mysterious force that makes one love writing so much — until one actually sits down to write?

I could think about my stories and all of my ideas all day and well into the night, but once I actually sit down at the computer, all that passion suddenly evaporates and I find I’d rather scroll Facebook, organize my files, or scrub every toilet in the house. Anything but actually get to the real business of writing words, sentences, paragraphs, and chapters.

Why is this?

I know it’s not just me. I follow enough authors on social media and see enough memes documenting this phenomenon to know it’s one of the most universal of feelings among writerly folk. There is a love for storytelling in the abstract. But the nitty-gritty of really, truly writing?

Not so much.

As I’ve plugged away at my current draft, forcing at least 1300 words out every day of the week except Sunday, I’ve been pondering this fact. I don’t think there’s been one single day in all the twenty-eight days I’ve been faithfully writing that I actually felt like doing it. Even on the days that the words flowed fairly easily, I felt the tug of resistance once I settled down to begin.

Why?

Today as I doggedly forced story from my fingertips, knowing that what I was creating was sub-par, I started wondering — do I hate this, not because it’s hard, but because I am afraid?

We love our stories. At least, speaking for myself, I love mine dearly. I dream about these characters and plotlines, sometimes for years, building an excitement at the thought of sharing my darlings with the world at large, anticipating the glory of that future day that it will be finished.

And yet the gap between what I’m doing and what I want is so yawningly enormous.

I know that I’m not telling this story the best it can be told. In fact, I know that I’m not anywhere close. I know that I’m not doing it justice, that what’s coming out bears only a shadow’s resemblance to what brings so much joy to my imagination. And there’s a part of me, deep down, that feels that if I can’t do it right, I shouldn’t be doing it at all. Doesn’t my story deserve better than I can give?

Maybe. And I could pontificate here on the fact that a first draft is not a final draft. This part of the process isn’t supposed to be perfect. But the real problem is that I know that no part of the process will be perfect. When I declare my story “finished,” it still will fall so far short of my desires for this, the child of my thoughts.

My story.

That is the point, ultimately. This is my story. And while perhaps I can never tell it perfectly, no one else can tell it at all. Perhaps I will always fail at making it what I want, but I am the only one in the universe who can make it.

And that, ultimately, is what drives me through the fear, what pushes me past those horrors of failure and dissatisfaction that threaten to keep me from ever writing these tales in the first place.

Despite it all, despite the imperfections and the understanding that it will never be all that I could wish, I will tell my stories.

As you must tell your stories.

For they, my friend, are ours.