What I Hate About Writing

I've uh, taken up writing again. It's been a while. I guess it's different for everyone but here's the gist.

I've always admired the places writing can take you - sometimes to the point where you'll snap back to reality and have to spend a good second remembering (ah yes, this is me, I am here, hello, I've come again, oh-for-the-love-of-god-why-does-that-person-still-exist).

Except, when I try to do that for myself, to take myself somewhere new, it never works. I describe snow peaked mountains and end up imagining myself sitting on the floor trying to convince myself that painted cardboard shapes can be mountains. It doesn't work. The cardboard pieces fall flat in a second and I'm left moving on to something else.

Or it might be the timing of a scene. The seconds and moments between one gesture and the next, between pieces of dialogue and character development. Usually it takes too long for me and I rush it, and, in reading it over, I think to myself 'now there's no way that would every happen, XYZ would need to happen first before that, that and that....'

And writing. Is. Bloody. Meticulous. An adjustment here means an adjustment there (and there and there and oh god scrap the whole thing and start it over). Like throwing a rock into a pound and seeing all the ripples, all the changes that need to be made. That's what drafts are for, I guess.

...I don't have patience for drafts.

Challenges are great, I guess. I'm only responsible for a small little thing and I can deal with all the details. Longer stuff is a real nightmare because everything needs to be taken into consideration. And I'm a real stickler for details.

I don't know where this is going. But, uh, yeah, that's only a (short) list of why I hate writing.

And yet.