Be kinder to yourself. Writing takes a long time.

Writing and freelancing ain’t easy.

Photo credit: I drew this picture of a rat in a jacket contemplating the concept of time. He’s okay with it.

Note: This letter is an expansion of a caption from my Instagram page from a few weeks back.

“Be kinder to yourself” is one of those sayings that loses all meaning when you hear it repeated all of the time. But after six years of writing and one year of freelancing, I’ve found that writers have the peculiar tendency to expect the act of writing to take infinitely less time than it does. 

A few months after I graduated college, I released a personal essay in Texas Monthly, a state magazine with a national reach. It was my first big story, both far-reaching and something I felt was a true representation of my skill. 

I thought that I would publish an essay like it every single month. I knew that my writing was at the level I wanted it to be, and I just cleared the hurdle of learning how to pitch to a magazine. But I kept watching the months pass by, and no such essays came about. I put out a few stories that I liked, but 15 months later, I still haven’t made anything I’d consider to be on the same level as that TM story.

There were a lot of timely topics I could have written about. I didn’t understand why I wasn’t hitting send on my pitches, or why I couldn’t write them in the first place.

Social media algorithms reward the mantra of make more and do it now. Last December, the YouTuber videogamedunkey put out a video titled I’m done making good videos. In contrast to his usual well-produced if irregularly uploaded material, he made a point of releasing relatively low-effort content every day for a few weeks. Within days of uploading what were effectively shitposts, he received a message from YouTube saying “Your hard work is paying off! Publishing more videos this week is helping your channel get 344% more views than usual.”

We see all this noise of produce, produce, produce. Keep engagement up, and keep the information stream coming and going. Many new writers, myself included, feel the financial and emotional pressure to make something big right now. 

I don’t blame myself for seeking regular publication for the sake of supporting myself and my ma. But art takes time. 

Some tasks, like pitching a story, seem mechanically simple but have more going on than we initially believe.

There’s a scene in Malcolm in the Middle where Bryan Cranston’s character Hal goes to put in a new lightbulb. But every step he takes, he finds something else wrong in the house. The shelf with the bulbs is broken, so he needs a screwdriver; the drawer with the screwdriver is creaky, so he needs to get more WD-40, and so on. His wife comes home and asks if he could change the light bulb. He rolls out from underneath his broken car and says, “What does it look like I’m doing?”

Writing isn’t just putting words on the page. It is the research, the head-clearing, and simply existing in this world.

Yes, pitching a story, in essence, is finding an email and sending two paragraphs to an editor. But it can be so much more when you’re first stepping into it. 

Maybe it’s grammar; maybe it’s fear of rejection; maybe you don’t yet understand what it means to you to have an audience see your art — whatever it is, you’re not a fool for struggling with things that seem simple. 

Learning the mechanics of a platform and reconciling our places in the systems we live under are part of the process. And likewise, some stories only become clear after experiencing distance from the events that inspired them. Years of thoughts and disparate notes and experiences went into my Texas Monthly story. When I set my publication goals, I undersold how many years of effort went into that one story.

Maybe I’ll write stories quicker down the line, but learning to be quicker — if it is even something I should or can be doing — that too takes time. My writing skill might be ready for frequent publication, but I, the writer, am not.

The financial and emotional burdens of capitalism can make you feel like a failure for existing without mass output. We can misjudge the time we need to afford to ourselves by misdiagnosing what we need to address. It’s overwhelming. But there is a difference between not being able to handle something and handling it just barely.

Here, we’re doing the latter. 

My writing skill might be ready for frequent publication, but I, the writer, am not.

My next big story will come soon enough but don’t lose sleep waiting up for it. Fair sailing until then and beyond,

Jade

With love to you all. Check out the prior letters and subscribe!

Keep up with my work: Jadefabello.com

Insta: @Jade__Fab

Twitter: @Jade_FW