The Tough Question

"So, how's your writing going?"

Every time I get asked that, I think, "Oh, kill me now." Not that I have a death wish, but open-ended questions like that hit me in two places at once. First and foremost, it reminds me that for the very moment I am being asked that question, I am not writing. I'm talking with people, at a party, or usually doing something social and the subject comes up. At that point, I've pretty much checkmated myself because I invite that very question to occur as a part of the ongoing small-talk - yet another reason I hate that question. However, I still feel this passive sense of guilt because I had a choice to either write or socialize, and I chose the latter. Now I would pay for it. However, that's not the worst part.

The real irksome part of getting hit with that question is it usually gets me to ask myself how my writing is going. I start a self-inventory process of the things I have written lately, anything I have running around my brain that I really want to write, what I am avoiding writing, and all these other writing questions. (Yes, I clearly overthink certain things.) But while I overthink everything, the question invariably comes up - how am I progressing as a writer? Am I progressing as a writer? What can I do to make more progress as a writer? (Wow, do I overthink things.)

The questions I end up asking myself may sound borne out of insecurity, but they do serve a purpose. Whenever we question ourselves as writers, the best thing to do is have a handy go-to move to put us back on track. One of my favorites is to look at old writing, just to see how far I actually have progressed. I can open up a ten-year-old document and do a quick word check on how many times I used, "that," "was," or "were," just to see where I wrote in a sloppy, passive manner. While I can't do that during whatever social event I attended that  led to getting asked that question, but it's still a good way to remedy doubts.

Of course, one of the sure-fire ways is always to just talk about the last thing you wrote, and let yourself get pulled back into your writing process. If your recent work was something as simple as a story of the last moments of a ham sandwich, remind yourself about whatever flared up in your mind and inspired you to write that story, to commit it to words instead of it just taking up a few neurons. Recreate whatever drove you to write, and express it in full. After all, you are a writer, so talk about writing.

However, the one thing that you should always keep in your back pocket is a little reminder. Even if you don't feel like much of a writer because you are going through writer's block, or caught in a plot contradiction, or getting those Act Two Blues, these are what writers go through. These happen, and will happen again as long as you continue to write. They are the unspoken moments writers go through, just like the war stories that never get told because they don't carry the drama of the exciting stories. So as long as you are writing, as long as you are living the life and working the processes you have developed and are developing, it's a pretty simple question to answer.

"It's going great, thank you."