What If Writing Didn't Have to Emotionally Drain You?
Addressing how you feel about writing does wonders for your ability to do it
It was a passing comment in a grad school seminar—but it turned into one of those stories that lingers, reshaping itself over time.
One of my professors recounted how, early in her career, she had worked at a teaching-intensive university—four classes a semester, heavy service load, the kind of job that leaves you stretched thin. And yet, somehow, during those years, she managed to write. Not just write, but write profoundly enough to land a position at a research university a few years later.
I remember asking her—genuinely puzzled—how she did it.
Her response?
“Writing was the thing that gave me energy. It was what I looked forward to at the end of the day.”
Dear reader, I was perplexed.
When Writing Feels Harder Than It Should
At that point in grad school, writing was not energizing for me. It was exhausting. Laborious. A task that drained me before I even began. I couldn’t imagine it being the thing I’d look forward to after a long day of teaching, let alone a source of energy. And so I quietly concluded that maybe I just wasn’t cut out for research. Maybe other people like that professor were just built differently.
That moment with my professor lingered for a long time. It wasn’t until years later that I understood what had been missing. It wasn’t just that I needed more time or better productivity tools.
I needed a new relationship with writing.
What Was Really Getting in the Way
Here’s what I now understand—both from my own experience and from coaching other writers: How we feel about writing has a profound impact on our ability to do it regularly.
If writing feels like something hard, time-consuming, or painful, it makes complete sense that it wouldn’t be the thing you’d turn to after a long day of teaching, meetings, or caregiving. It takes a tremendous amount of emotional and mental energy just to begin. What looked like “not enough time” was, more often than not, a matter of emotional bandwidth.
Over the years, I’ve worked hard to change that relationship. These days, when I sit down to write, I don’t always feel excited—but I also don’t feel dread. Writing has become a regular part of my life. Neutral, even. Something I do the way I brush my teeth or take the dogs out in the morning.
Sometimes inspiration shows up and the words come easily. Other times it’s a slog. But either way, I show up, and the emotional roller coaster does not.
What helped me most was naming and working through the emotional barriers that were getting in the way—perfectionism, fear of not being smart enough, and that awful inner voice that said, “You should know how to do this by now.”
What I see with so many of my clients is that they’re in the same boat I was. When they’re not writing as much as they’d like, they often point to a lack of time or energy—and of course, we all have real limits. Some weeks are heavier than others. Some seasons ask more of us.
But often, it’s not just about time or energy—it’s about how we feel about writing.
When we slow down and look more closely at where the energy is actually going, a different picture often emerges. It’s not that they have no time or energy to write—it’s that the emotional cost of writing is too high. And that cost is shaped by fear, perfectionism, or self-doubt—by the weight writing carries, not just the time it takes.
Rewriting the Stories You Tell Yourself About Writing
If we want to write more regularly, sometimes we can’t just rearrange our schedules. We have to rearrange our relationship to writing itself. That’s the challenge in front of us.
Of course, rewriting your relationship to writing is easier said than done, but the effort is so worthwhile. It’s what makes consistent writing possible—even joyful. You might just find that writing is something you can look forward to again.
If this message resonates with you, know that one of the things I most enjoy in my coaching practice is helping scholars work through these emotional barriers to writing. It’s powerful and transformative work.
If you’d like support with this, you can learn more about coaching with me.
