Your Writing Matters (Even When it Doesn’t Feel Like It)

Do you ever feel like your writing just doesn’t matter?

Unless you’ve got some kind of deadline, writing is pretty much never urgent. It’s also not something that needs a lot of space or time: it’s tempting to think that writing could – or even should – fit into the little nooks and crannies of your life.

And if your family and friends aren’t writers themselves, you might feel that they don’t see your writing as important. It seems like, in their eyes, writing is a minor quirk of yours, or perhaps at best, a solitary hobby that you’re strangely absorbed by.

I believe wholeheartedly that your writing does matter.

So why can our writing so often feel unimportant, insignificant, or even self-indulgent?

Issue #1: Your Genre Doesn’t Feel Like “Real” Writing

Plenty of writers I’ve talked to over the years have felt that whatever they write is somehow not real writing. It’s silly or frivolous, or in some way, it doesn’t “count”.

This can apply to writers in all kinds of genres, but a few that often crop up are:

• Fanfiction: writers may feel this doesn’t “count” because they’re mostly not making up their own characters and worlds, and/or because there’s no chance of getting paid to write fanfiction.
• Romance: writers may feel this is a frivolous genre, or not “real” literature, or too reliant on tropes, or too self-indulgent … or all kinds of things that make it feel like it shouldn’t really matter to them.
• Children’s fiction: perhaps a picture book doesn’t feel like “real” writing because it’s such a small amount of text, or a chapter book feels simplistic.

The thing is, any genre can be more or less legitimate than any other, depending on how you look at it.

Fanfiction writers, for instance, are following a very old literary tradition of crafting new stories based on existing characters and plots. (Hey, if it was good enough for Shakespeare…) And the lack of money involved means there’s a certain “art for art’s sake” to fanfiction – people writing purely for the love of writing.

Romance writers may feel dismissed – but that dismissal is to do with the domination of literature by men for centuries. Most (though far from all) romance is written by women, for women … and people critiquing it for being “trope-y” might not apply the same criticisms to male-dominated genres like military sci-fi.

Children’s authors can craft stories that stay with people for their whole lives. If you enjoyed reading as a child, I bet there are books you read over and over again, remember fondly now, and would happily read to a child in your life. (I’ve been reading the Chronicles of Narnia to my son, which were first read to me, decades ago, by my grandfather.)

Whatever genre you’re writing in, your writing counts.

Issue #2: You Could Write Anywhere, Anytime … So You End Up Not Writing at All

Some creative projects take a significant amount of space and/or time.

If you were an artist working on large canvases, for instance, you might have a whole studio – or at least a room in your house to hold all your art supplies.

If you were an actor in a play, you’d have a schedule of rehearsals and then performances.

One of the great things about writing is that you need very little to get started. You don’t even need a computer (at least to start with): you can write by hand, or on your phone.

This makes writing wonderfully accessible … but it also means it can be incredibly hard to defend the space and time you need to write. 

After all, if writing can be done pretty much anywhere, it’s easy to end up with your writing space being the kitchen table or the sofa, where you get interrupted a lot. And if writing can be done at any time, there’s no reason why it can’t be put off until later, or tomorrow, or next week, if someone or something else needs your attention.

Issue #3: Your Writing Isn’t Making Any Money

Many writers dream of making a living from writing novels. Being published – and getting paid – feels like it would be validation, a sign that the writing is important and worthwhile. And if you’re not published, or if you’re self-published with very few sales, it’s easy to feel like your writing doesn’t matter at all.

It’s worth keeping in mind that most novelists don’t, in fact, make a living from their novels. This has pretty much always been the case: Charles Dickens was a journalist and editor, not just a novelist; Virginia Woolf was a journalist and reviewer; Stephen King and Philip Pullman were both English teachers early in their career.

So if your writing is making little or no money … that’s very normal, especially at the start of a writing career.

Also, how much money you make from your books doesn’t correlate with the quality of your writing.

There are lots of literary authors who don’t make all that much money … but who write books that are considered worth studying at university.

There are also highly successful commercial authors who’ve been roundly slated by literary critics. Think “the majority of the book is nothing but sappy cringeworthy fluff” (Jarosława Radowski on Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight) or “weapons-grade bollocks from beginning to end” (Sam Leith on Dan Brown’s The Secret of Secrets).

Plus, plenty of writers don’t make any money for years … only to get published or find a large readership well into their career. Were their earlier books not worth bothering with? No: they’d just not found their audience yet. A massive success can come from a tiny start. The first print run for the first Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone edition was just 500 hardback copies, of which 300 were sent straight to libraries.

Let Your Writing Matter to You

It may feel like your writing doesn’t matter to anyone. That no one cares whether you write or not.

Even if that is true … let your writing matter to you.

Carve out dedicated space and time for your writing. Put it on your calendar or in your diary. Treat your writing like it’s an important part of your life … because it is!

It doesn’t matter what genre you’re writing in … all kinds of writing matter, in all kinds of ways.

It doesn’t matter if you could write “anywhere” and “any time” … it’s still good to stake a claim to a time and place to write.

And it doesn’t matter if you’re not making any money … your writing is still important and worthwhile.

I write the Aliventures blog (and newsletter) because your writing matters to me. Because I want you to have more time to write, enjoy it more, and grow as a writer. Because I want you to finish what you’re working on and get it out there into the world, in whatever way is right for you.

Your writing matters. This week, seize some time and space for it.