Do You Get Writer's Guilt?

 

It's ridiculous but I can't get it out of my head. Yesterday the gas man came over to do a routine check up on our boiler. I was hoping for a chatty man because I'd been home alone plotting a novel for over a week and was starting to hunger for human interaction. The gas man, however, was a quiet man.

 

I sat with my cork board slowly pinning post-it notes to it while he fiddled about with the gas reader. He declined my offer of a cup of tea.

 

As he finished off he said, 'Are you doing a course?'

'No, I'm plotting a novel,' I said. ' I'm a writer.'

The inevitable question came, 'What do you write?'

'Well, I've just written a romantic comedy.'

'Ah, rom coms,' he said knowingly, and then he uttered the words that would niggle at me for the rest of the day, 'a life of leisure then.'

 

I know I tried to justify myself. I said I did other jobs too. And as he slipped through the door I muttered incoherently that writing a hundred thousand words was not my idea of leisure. But it was too late. I was left feeling like I'd been smacked in the face, laughed at, belittled. I was a silly little girl, writing silly little stories, who spent her days relaxing while the rest of the world worked hard in the 'real' world.  

 

My mind kept going back to it, redrafting what I should have said. But he wouldn't have cared either way and why should he? I shouldn't care either, so, why does it bother me so much?

 

This morning, I decided it must be guilt. I'm one of those people that think if it doesn't hurt, you're probably not doing enough. I've always had a job, since I was a teenager. All the writing I ever did was done early in the morning before work, or in the evening. I was forever wishing I had more time. I felt like I was investing all my energy into some pointless job and giving the remains of myself to what I really wanted to do in life.

But I was disciplined because I wanted to be a writer so much, and I managed to finish a full-length novel, which I never did anything with, and later, after working on a blog for a long time, Shop Girl Diaries, which was published.

 

It's thanks to my husband's support that I now write full-time. It was him that suggested I take a year to just write. In that time I've often felt useless for not being able to contribute financially. At my lowest moments, Destiny's Child's song 'Independent Women', has played in my head, reminding me I didn't even buy my own notebook, let alone my own diamonds. But mostly, I've felt happy! Because what bliss it is to wake up to a whole day to write. For me, it's a dream come true.

 

I'm no longer a frustrated writer, which is not to say some days aren't hard going. But I love what I do. Since I've been writing full-time I've finished a new novel and at last got an agent. It is my job even if it doesn't feel like one.  

 

I suppose I felt guilty when Mr Gasman said I was living a life of leisure because I was enjoying myself, happy at my work. And what on earth is wrong with that?