A Writer’s List of Writer Feels by Me, a Writer

I am largely an emotionless person. At least, that was mostly true until this year. Man, this year has got me having all the feels, for reasons I don’t want to get into here. Suffice it to say, this year is kicking my emotional ass.

Writer feels are another story altogether. I have them all the time (not that you’d be able to tell. I play most feels close to the vest). I can’t speak for all writers, but below is a list of writer feels, in no particular order:

1. Unbridled Joy. I’m sure we all wish this one happened more often. It generally occurs when you hit the groove, words are flowing well and actually sort of make sense, and you remember why you love to write–for times exactly like this.
   
2. Self-Recognized Brilliance. Can follow a period of Unbridled Joy, or come after a time when every word has been a struggle. It happens when you look back at what you wrote, either moments or months ago, and realize you’ve written a line so good that the only response is: “I 👏🏻AM 👏🏻 A 👏🏻 FUCKING 👏🏻 GENIUS 👏🏻.” And then you send it to your writing buddy, and he writes back, “Hey, that’s pretty good,” which is not EXACTLY the response you were looking for but at least it’s not awful.
   
3. Imposter Syndrome. I’m sure most of us are familiar with this. It’s that feeling that you’re not really a writer, but you’re faking it so well that everyone seems to think you’re really a writer. And you just have to keep faking it so no one realizes the truth.
   
4. Crippling Self-Doubt. THE ABSOLUTE WORST. “This is stupid. No one will want to read this. The story is lousy and the characters are idiots. Why did I think I could do this?”
   
5. Existential Dread. If you’re not careful, your Crippling Self-Doubt can slide into Existential Dread, and you start to wonder if why you’re even doing this and maybe you should be doing something else entirely. This happened to me while working on the second draft of Whatever Will Be. It started just as I’ve described above, thinking the story was stupid and no one would ever want to read it. Before long, I was questioning–after wanting to be a writer for two-thirds of my life–if this is really what I was supposed to be doing. So I took a break. I put the novel aside, and when I wrote, I worked on something else entirely–something different that you may or may not get to read someday. My break lasted almost three weeks, and when I started the second draft again, I started over from the beginning, and I remembered why I thought this story needed to be to told, and why I thought I was the one to tell it. The Crippling Self-Doubt still happens more frequently than I would like, but thankfully it doesn’t often slip into Existential Dread.
   
6. Unspecified Fear. Of what? WHO KNOWS? What if the book is out there and no one reads it? What if everyone reads it? What if it sucks and no one tells me? What if everyone tells me? What if it’s the only one I ever finish? What if the next book comes out and that one stinks and no one reads it? Who is screaming? Oh, yeah. That’s me.
   
7. Hamilton Relatability. Lin-Manuel Miranda is a genius and I will fight anyone who disagrees. The closing number of the first act is about (among other things) how Alexander Hamilton spends all his time writing. “How do you write like tomorrow won’t arrive?/How do you write like you need it to survive?/How do you write every second you’re alive?” After Hamilton died, his wife Eliza sorted through his writings, whose pages numbered in the thousands without benefit of a typewriter, or even a ballpoint pen. Astounding for a man who lived to be only a little older than I am now. How, indeed.

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After the ass-cheek underwear crisis earlier this week, I’ve decided to stick with my closing line, Victoria’s Secret be damned. My name is Victoria and I know the secret. THEIR UNDERWEAR DOESN’T FIT ANYONE WITH A REAL BODY. There I said it. DO WHAT MAKES YOU HAPPY. And wear underwear that makes you comfortable.