Writing Myths That Hold Us Back

By Jane Ward

You finish one flash piece and your brain is firing; you’ve come up with a great idea for the next short story. After months of character sketches and plot walks, you itch to sit down to start that new novel. Maybe you even have a great first line. Supportive writer friends from your writing group cheer you on. Quivering with anticipation, you open a new document onscreen, but instead of tapping the keys, all you can do is stare at the vast whiteness.

If you are a fiction writer who has fiction writer friends, it is “a truth universally acknowledged” that many of your conversations about new projects will turn into commiserations about facing down blank pages and filling them with words. “I know it’s a great idea, if only I could start the darn thing.” 

When it’s not a deficit of ideas holding you back, when in fact all the pieces are in place—characters, plot, enthusiasm, motivation—why is it so hard to take that first step into your own creativity? As someone who has uttered her fair share of “if onlys”, I have an idea that certain writing myths can shake a writer’s confidence. Let’s examine a few of these and try, if we can, to strip them of their power over us.

The Myth of The Writer

We’ve all seen or read romanticized portrayals of The Writer holed up in a book-lined garret, forgetting to eat, clacking away at the keyboard as the stack of manuscript pages on her desk grows taller and taller. When the pile is tall enough, she receives an offer from a top agent and a multi-million-dollar publishing contract. The truth is, it’s never that easy. Stringing a story together takes many secluded, difficult hours, and there are no guarantees your work will even have readers when it’s finished. This myth of effortless success may cause you to ask, Why bother? You bother because stopping before you begin ensures your work will never be read. Don’t limit yourself. You deserve to discover what your hard work might accomplish.

The Myth of Other

I have a very structured writer friend who sets daily goals for herself and meets them by settling down at her desk until her writing timer goes off. I also know writers who are more organized than I am, more capable at outlining plots, smarter, funnier…need I go on? Measuring ourselves against other writers’ habits is a momentum killer. The resulting feeling of inadequacy places one more obstacle in the journey to finishing, and isn’t writing hard enough? Remove the pressure of comparison and concentrate instead on what you do well and writing your story as only you can.

The Myth of the Imposter

Raise your hand if you have ever believed that the world is full of amazing and accomplished people—peace makers, justice warriors, epidemiologists—and compared to their efforts, what you do is inconsequential. That story idea that you shared in the writing group together with the attention-grabbing opening line? It’s not eradicating a disease. Nevertheless, you are writing a story that will transport readers into worlds they might not be familiar with and introduce them to characters who lead lives different from their own. Fiction in its own stealthy way cures deficits and helps build empathy. You, writer, have a very important job too.

The Myth of Immediate Brilliance

Teased by the idea that writers fall into a trance-like state that produces lyrical, gorgeous prose, we can come to expect words will flow immediately and beautifully from our brains to the page. But more often, the first draft represents a hard slog, its pages rife with plot clunkers and inconsistencies and banal dialogue because you’re still working through who your characters are and where their story is going. Let it be so. Write that clunky draft knowing you can go back to clear up the errors and layer your story with nuances and graceful imagery. Brilliance doesn’t happen immediately, but you can unleash its full force in revision.

If you are excited by your ideas for a new writing project but are finding it hard to jump into the manuscript, take a pause. Ask yourself if you are letting one of these myths hold you back. If the answer is yes, I hope you find some encouragement here that will motivate you to set aside the doubts and keep writing! 

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JANE WARD is the author of Hunger (Forge 2001) and The Mosaic Artist. She graduated from Simmons College with a degree in English literature and began working almost immediately in the food and hospitality industry: private events planner with Creative Gourmets in Boston, planner of corporate parties at The 95th Restaurant in Chicago, and weekend baker at Quebrada Bakery in Arlington, Massachusetts.

She has been a contributing writer for the online regional and seasonal food magazine Local In Season and a blogger and occasional host of cooking videos for MPN Online, an internet recipe resource affiliated with several newspapers across the country. Although a Massachusetts native, Jane recently settled in Chicago after returning to the US from Switzerland. Find her online at

Website: janeaward.com

Twitter: @authorjane

Instagram: @authorjaneward

Facebook: @janealessandriniward

IN THE AFTERMATH

When David Herron—overwhelmed and despairing, his family’s business and finances in ruin due to the bursting lending bubble of 2008—takes his own life one chilly spring morning, he has no idea the ripple effect his decision will set into motion.

Two years later, his widow, Jules, is now an employee of the bakery she and David used to own—and still full of bitterness over David’s lies, perceived cowardice, and ultimate abandonment of her and their now-teenage daughter, Rennie. Rennie, meanwhile, struggles socially at school, resents her work-obsessed mother, and is convinced she’s to blame for her father’s death.

When Denise, the former police detective who worked (and, due to her own personal struggles at the time, mishandled) David’s case, catches sight of Rennie at her sons’ school, she’s struck by the girl’s halo of sadness—and becomes obsessed with attempting to right the wrongs she believes she perpetrated two years ago.

And as all this unfolds in Boston, Daniel, the guilt-ridden young man who, in his old life as a banker, helped create the circumstances that led to David’s suicide, continues to punish himself for his sins by living half a life, working odd jobs and bouncing from one US city to another, never staying long enough to make friends or build something lasting.

Ultimately, each of these very different people—all of them tied together by one tragic event—must learn in their own way how to say good-bye to the past and move into a brighter future.

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Category: Contemporary Women Writers, How To and Tips