Episode Description:
In this episode of What If For Authors, Claire Taylor dives into a very scary question: What if I no longer enjoy writing? Claire addresses the underlying fears, resistance, and emotional blocks that may contribute to the diminishing joy of writing. By exploring how each Enneagram type uniquely experiences this struggle, Claire provides practical insights and diagnostic tools to help you reconnect with the pleasure of storytelling. Whether it’s perfectionism, doubt, or fear of vulnerability, Claire offers actionable steps to reignite your creative passion.
Key Takeaways:
Understanding the Fear: Losing the joy of writing often stems from underlying fears or resistance, not the loss of storytelling itself. Claire reassures listeners that the innate love for storytelling never truly disappears.
Diagnostic Check: Claire emphasizes the importance of checking in with your body, emotions, and mind when facing resistance to writing. This mindfulness approach can help identify and address the root causes of the struggle.
Personalized Tips for Each Enneagram Type: Claire offers specific advice for each Enneagram type, helping authors understand their unique challenges with writing and how to overcome them.
Reconnecting with Joy: Whether you’re feeling overwhelmed by obligations, perfectionism, fear, or control issues, there are steps you can take to clear away the clutter and reignite the joy of writing.
Why You Should Listen: If writing feels like a chore or you’re worried that you’ve lost the passion for it, this episode provides insightful tools to help you regain your creative spark. By understanding the deeper emotions at play and learning how to manage them, you can rediscover the joy that led you to writing in the first place.
Join the Conversation: Do you have a topic you’d like Claire to explore or need support with your writing journey? Reach out to her at contact@ffs.media, and consider booking a one-on-one coaching session.
Happy Writing!
TRANSCRIPT:
Claire: [00:00:00] Welcome back to another episode of What If for Authors. I'm so glad you're here. My name's Claire Taylor and I'm an Enneagram Certified Coach for Authors as well as a humor and mystery writer. You can check out my latest book, Sustain Your Author Career by going to ffs.media/slash sustain. I recorded a bunch of the earlier episodes a while ago and all at once because that's just what works best for my brain. I like to batch things. And then I had to move on to a bunch of other tasks and projects for my business. Like, I don't know, trying to sell some of these courses that help, help pay my bills.
Um, trying to, you know, Fill out the Liberated Writer Retreat in October so I don't lose thousands of dollars on it. Mm, easier said than done when everyone's, you know, being very, very conscious of where they're spending their money, which is great. Which is great. It does require a little bit more focus on this project for [00:01:00] me.
You know, and I've also been trying to record the Sustain Your Author Career audiobook, which hopefully by the time this episode airs, will already be out. I don't know. I had a sore throat for a while, so I kind of had to stop recording the audiobook. Um, so it didn't, you know, I didn't sound like hell on it.
Anyway. I've been doing a lot of other projects between recording these episodes. Oh yeah, I'm also writing my own damn fiction, , theoretically. it's on the list. It's easy to let that fall by the wayside if I'm not really careful about it. Um, but we'll talk more about all of that, the, the writing process in today's episode.
But my point is that. I'm recording this episode after not recording this podcast for a while, so I'm trying to remember how I do it. It's been a very big season of transition in my life this year. I can't tell you how over it I feel some days. Very over it. But what it means [00:02:00] is that sometimes if I take a break from a project for a few weeks and then come back to it, I feel like a completely different person when I'm working on it.
I have to be like, wait, how did Claire do this? Anyway, I'm at that point in recording this podcast, but also in writing the fiction book I'm working on. I also have a series I really want to get back to because it's finally starting to sell. And I just, I love writing it. But that's another thing where I'm like, How do I do this?
How did I do this? Who is the person writing this? So I have to go back and re read the first three books of that series before I can really get back into that version of me in that story world. Anyway, just a little aside about how being a fiction writer is so fucking weird. Speaking of being a writer It's usually defined, in a general sense, as being a person who writes things.
They can be fictional things, they can be non fictional things, [00:03:00] but you're probably writing things, if you're a writer. And if you are a person who writes things, then I would bet money that you are also a person who occasionally freaks out because your love of writing things has slowed down or dried up, and you're worried that it will never come back.
So, that brings us to our episode topic today, which is what if I don't enjoy writing anymore?
I have asked myself this question before. Listen, it's a scary question. What if, what if I stop enjoying writing and don't want to do it anymore? What do I do with this identity of being a writer? What do I do if I hate writing, but my income is totally dependent on it? What now? If you're like me, you may start wondering if it's too late to go to law school, or whatever.
Whatever school you're thinking of. , but before we begin applying, let's just [00:04:00] pause a beat. So, I think it's natural for a lot of strange emotions and thoughts to get stuck like glue to our writing habits. But writers love telling a good story, and I think it's important to remember that that part of you will never change.
When you're out with friends, you'll still find yourself telling stories, and I think that's a really important thing to notice in ourselves. If you're a writer, you are one of those people who is described as a natural storyteller, more likely than not. That doesn't mean that you couldn't improve on your craft of storytelling, we all can, but it usually means that you think of everything in terms of story.
Although, here's the truth. All humans do. Right? Humans make sense of the world with story. Story is just the through line that we find for a bunch of different data points that are generally meaning neutral. Story is how we weave them together to create meaning. Meaning. So, okay, bear with me. [00:05:00] Think of like the atoms in the air, okay?
The atoms in the air, or around us in our environment, it's not air, air is an emergent, you know, definition, but the atoms around us are moving very quickly. Relative to what we normally experience from that data. We craft a definition of what we call temperature, which measures the speed and movement of atoms.
It's been a little bit, maybe, maybe there's a more precise definition that I'm missing here, but you get the point. Then using the data of temperature, we apply label like, Oh, it's hot. Something is hot. Then we decide that if it's nice and hot outside for many days in a row, We are going to call that summer.
Then maybe for you, you take the data point of summer and a collection of data points from your childhood and associate summer with a time of, you know, adventure, playing around. So now you have a [00:06:00] story about summer, right? So we build that story for a lot of reasons, including placing ourself in space and time.
Sort of creating an anchor of what is now, what was then, what will be later, and so forth. It also helps us figure out the meaning of our lives within the context of the data we're swimming in. And psychologically speaking, that's a big fucking deal for human beings, to be able to have a sense of that. A sense of place, a sense of belonging, a sense of relevancy.
It's very important to our daily functioning. Now I go off on this little philosophical tangent simply to point out that storytelling is so essential to the human mind that you don't really have to worry about there being a time when you stop enjoying storytelling. Storytelling itself, whether you enjoy it or not, you're going to keep doing it, right?
This is how we communicate with other people. We communicate through stories. We [00:07:00] communicate with ourselves through stories. So really where we start to run into problems as writers is in the process of converting those small stories that we have into something more long form. Or maybe you just get sick of typing.
Honestly, there are days where I'm so sick of typing on my keyboard or my phone that I just, I can't, I can't eat more. I can't even stomach. The typing process. So this is probably more of a weird little, like, me thing. But all that to say, I understand if typing is the thing that's making you gag a little bit when you think about writing.
So there are workarounds for that. And for everything else. But, you know, it could be a number of other things that is making the writing process unpleasant for you. Emotionally, physically, or psychologically. And that problem can become so big that it feels like all of writing is a chore. And that's when the fear starts to come in that, you know, maybe I don't like writing anymore, [00:08:00] maybe I don't enjoy this, maybe I don't want to do this anymore, what now?
For a writer, especially someone who has built an author career, that thought creeping in can be very unsettling. So let me just assure you that it's not the storytelling you're sick of. You may be sick of the genre tropes you're writing, right? There may be certain parts of the kinds of stories that you're writing that feel boring or worn out, or just not on the level of where you are in your life right now.
But your drive to tell stories is still there. So, all we really have to do is With that resistance to writing when it comes up is just to take a step back and look at the particulars of what you're writing, maybe how much you're writing when you're writing, how you are writing. , we can get pretty analytical here.
And I find that depersonalizing this, , conundrum with. A little bit of analysis can be pretty useful, so it [00:09:00] takes away a lot of that fear reaction that sort of hovers over us when we think, Oh no, this might be the end for me. This might be the end for my author career if I never enjoy writing again. So, keeping the faith.
That we have not lost our enjoyment of telling a good story and that it's still there, perhaps buried under layers of resistance and the general clutter of our brains. We can start to check in with our three centers when it's time to sit down and write. So check into your body center. Notice any sensations that are arising when you think about writing your manuscript.
Is there tension, restlessness, any sort of burning or tingling sensation? If we tune into these sensations, they're are a lot of answers to be found. There may be something completely different going on in our lives that has become connected in a sort of vague, correlative way to the process of writing, that actually [00:10:00] has nothing to do with writing.
So tuning into our body center can start to unravel this mystery a little bit for us. Next, ask yourself what emotions come up when you sit down to write. Is there a nagging feeling of inadequacy? Are you feeling insecure? Are you feeling empty, isolated, indifferent? If you're struggling to write, it's probably going to be a mixture of the less pleasant or negative emotions that you're feeling when you sit down to write.
Having a bunch of pleasant feelings associated with writing does not tend to cause problems of this nature. Right? Have That's pretty obvious. And then check in with your head center. If you have an internal monologue, what is being said to you? What self talk is happening when you sit down at the computer?
If you're a visual person, maybe what situation or what images keep popping into your head or what interaction with someone is haunting you right now? Which, let's be real, can happen. If you [00:11:00] recently had someone blindside you with painful criticism, is that coming up for you in some way when you sit down to write?
Once you discover where these negative thoughts and feelings and sensations are coming from, simply by just asking them questions. It's amazing how effective just pausing and asking fully formed questions can be. Then you can really start to dig into them and use the tools that I talk about all of the time.
So these are tools that you learn from Reclaim Your Author Career and in Sustain Your Author Career. They're the kind of tools that you learn from working with, you know, a therapist or a coach and so on. So the tools may look like talking through the situation with yourself and journaling about it until your brain is sort of processed, whatever that block is.
, an effective tool for you might be talking it over with a friend. , there's a number of things we can do once we assess what is really the blockage there. So, if you notice that this block is something like shame based, a [00:12:00] shame based bit of resistance, , then a lot of the time the best thing to do to combat shame is to open up about it.
Just tell someone you trust about it. Tell them, I'm feeling a lot of shame about this. Right? Don't have shame about your shame. Right? We all feel shame. But when we start to talk about it, that's when it really starts to loosen its grip. So, tell that person that you trust what it makes you feel, even if there's no logic to it.
And you know there's no logic to it. This is not a head center thing. This is a heart center thing. So don't let your head try and become overbearing. Just speak the shame. If you feel like it's some sort of control thing that's stopping you, For instance, if you're an 1 in the, what's called the autonomy triad, then you can do some breath work and some visualization exercises to remind you of your autonomy and agency and where you [00:13:00] end and another person begins.
So, , the twos, the threes, and the fours are more likely to be dealing with the shame. The eights, nines, and ones are more likely to be dealing with the control or autonomy struggles. So if you really want to get crazy and deep about it with the autonomy thing, you can remind yourself that there really is no them and me in a very real sense.
And that even the idea of a human is an emergent theory. Right. What, what is the composition of a human, which atoms are the humans, which are not right. And we're getting into a little bit of like, I don't know, the sort of emergent theory of cosmology, but we're also getting into a little bit of Buddhist teachings.
It's all, it all, it all overlaps, right? But essentially our definition of human is Is a pretty loose one that's easy to kind of deconstruct into like, well, what is it? [00:14:00] So that can be it can be really scary to people who are dealing with autonomy issues But once you get through the bulk of those, it can actually be really liberating to be like, yeah, it's fine.
Human is an emergent theory, so it's okay to feel influenced by people. And we don't have to get our hackles up all the time. We can still have agency. And now if it's some sort of scarcity issue that's blocking you, you don't feel safe writing, or you feel like writing is not working toward your security enough, then we can do some of the fear work that the 5's, 6's, and 7's need, remembering that Life is not a zero sum game.
At the same time, there are trade offs that everyone must make. So, if you're a five, maybe you need to go remind yourself that energy flows freely, and that in trying to block off your energy from invasions of other people, you're blocking yourself off from all kinds of sources of energy. Uh, and so on and so forth, right?
So that would be my first step if you feel like you don't enjoy writing [00:15:00] anymore. Right? It's really about looking for what is getting in the way of the flow of telling a story. What is kicking up that fear? And it may not look like fear. Okay? Fear doesn't always look like we're shaken in our boots. It can look like self judgment.
It can look like a lack of boundaries. It can look like, , Intellectual superiority, people pleasing, uh, a lack of focus, fear can look a lot of ways. So just a diagnostic check, it might seem overly simple, but we have a tendency to skip over this step. We usually go fear, , jump to conclusions, freak out, right?
So this, this diagnostic check step, Is so, so crucial. So the fear though, it's not good at letting us move into our critical thinking. It's not good at that. Fear really helps sever us from our three centers., [00:16:00] So the fear will make us skip over it. But like if we have anxiety about hitting a goal by a certain day, and if we're worried, we may not hit that.
Or if there's some sort of fear of our identity shifting, anything like that. That just, that is what takes us out of our critical thinking, right? It takes us completely offline. So this pause to diagnose so that we can troubleshoot will have to be a conscious effort.
But we can practice remembering to do this step because it's, you know, it's really hard to do anything else without first pausing to see what's going on. Right? Well, it's easy to do other things, but it's not necessarily easy to do productive things that move us in a positive direction. So, if we don't take the time we need to run the diagnostic, we will end up trying to fix the wrong issue.
So sometimes when you run this little diagnostic check, just seeing what problem was hitting in our subconscious mind is enough. To shoo it away. So that we can get back to [00:17:00] writing. If that happens, we're very lucky. And it wouldn't be a bad idea to take a moment to feel grateful. But even if that doesn't happen, even if it's not that immediate of a fix, and we realize that there is a much deeper issue that is blocking us off from the flow of storytelling, we are still better off than we were before.
Let me be clear. Deeper self knowledge is always a step forward. Our brain may tell us that it's better to not know, and that by discovering an issue, we are actually creating or intensifying the issue. But that's really just not how it works. So if your brain is telling you that's how it works, then your brain is trying to protect you, but in a very misguided way.
Fear has a tendency of growing very large in the shadow of the unknown. So knowing helps us reduce fear to a reasonable size by defining [00:18:00] it. Okay, so notice when we're getting signals that it's better to not know And to not pry into what is stopping us, or to just skip over the diagnostic part. Because, you know, knowing may somehow be worse than not knowing.
That's not the case. Once you know, you have agency, and you can take action. When you don't know, you lack agency. And any action you take is unguided and unlikely to be successful. So, instead of taking action on what we can control, What we do is we end up trying to exert control on things that are outside of our control, and that is just an energy drain.
And it really shifts us out of alignment. So knowing what is going on is going to move you forward in a way that not knowing what's on will not. Anyway, okay. So let me do a quick run through to get everyone started with the [00:19:00] common blocks I see by Enneagram type. So these are the things that I most commonly see as the culprits for why people come to me going, I don't enjoy writing anymore.
What do I do now? Okay. I will try to make this a quick run through, but y'all know me by now. This is, what, episode 17 or something? Uh, you know, I try to keep it short. Anyway, let's dive in. So when Enneagram Type Ones, the Reformers, aka the Principled Writers, start to fear that they don't enjoy writing anymore, often what's happening is that they don't feel like they deserve the joy of writing.
So, this is usually something like, I haven't earned my writing time yet. Uh, there are usually a lot of other responsibilities that feel like the more responsible thing to be giving your attention to, if you're a one. If you haven't been keeping an eye on your sense of personal [00:20:00] obligation, you know, then forget about it.
Because you're gonna be committed to so many things that seem much more high stakes than writing. Even if your income comes from the books you write.
That sense of personal obligation stretches our attention so thin. And then the one's tendency is to pick whichever activity is least fun and do that first. In this sort of subconscious way of thinking that we have to earn life not being a slog. So, there may also be a few like thorns of criticism that have gotten stuck in your craw lately.
And those, you know, they may be threatening to emerge again when you sit down to write. So that makes the writing process, , precarious and rather unpleasant. So what I would suggest, if you are a 1, is looking at all of the things that you have taken on as your responsibility, finding just a little bit of humility about how you don't have more capacity than every other [00:21:00] person on earth.
You know, risking disappointing a few people if you have to, but offloading some of the responsibilities you've taken on out of a sense of personal obligation so that it doesn't feel like everyone on this planet is waiting for you to hurry up and get your writing done so you can go fix the world.
You probably also want to look at what sort of words your inner critic is saying to you lately, and then, you know, address those. So, maybe say them out loud to someone. Doing this often helps us see how ridiculous, and frankly cruel, that inner critic is. So don't let them hide inside your head. Say those words to someone else and watch that person's reaction of horror.
Maybe ask yourself if you would ever say that to someone who you loved dearly. Now there's a lot more inner critic work that you can do, but basically, do it, do it with a therapist, read some books on it, that's an issue you're going to want to address if you can get back to the non judgmental joy [00:22:00] of crafting stories.
So when Enneagram Twos, the helpers, aka the helpful writers, struggle to connect to the enjoyment of writing, It's usually because they don't see the immediate impact that their writing has on other people. It's also probably because there are a lot of other temptations around them that they are not setting boundaries with.
So these temptations for a two look generally like people who need help. People that the two could serve and get that gratification from of being helpful. Do books help people? Absolutely. Absolutely. And if you're a writer, it won't be hard for you to think of a book That's really helped you in your life more than the author could have ever known, right?
More than they probably dared to imagine. But it's not always easy to remember that we could be that author for someone else. So the first thing you need to do if you're worried that you no longer enjoy your writing [00:23:00] is to ask what boundaries you need to be putting. And our boundaries aren't things that we hand to other people and say, Hey, hold this for me.
Boundaries are rules for yourself that you will not break. They are promises to yourself that you will uphold around your time and your energy. and around your emotions, thoughts, and actions. I will do this under these circumstances, and I will not do this under these circumstances. It's that sort of thing.
So your boundaries cannot be contingent on other people respecting those boundaries. If that's the case, If you're hoping to imagine boundaries and hand them to someone else and then that other person will never infringe upon your boundary and it will not, and they'll just accept them and they'll just say, oh, yeah, no, this is great that you're setting a boundary.
No problems here. If that's what you're expecting with boundaries, you're in la la land. That is not how boundaries work. Sometimes, [00:24:00] oftentimes, people get upset when you set boundaries. , that's just the way it is. There is no perfect way to train split hairs so that you can have your boundaries and people please.
So if you need to address the people pleasing that goes behind not wanting to set boundaries in the first place, then that is where I would start. Yes, there might be a lot of deep work required to clear out the clutter between you and your enjoyment of writing. It's worth it. It's worth it, and you don't have to earn it.
You can create that space for yourself just because you want it.
Okay, when Enneagram Threes, the achievers, aka the productive writers, So, I think that's one of the reasons why readers struggle to connect to the enjoyment of their writing. It's usually, uh, for one of two reasons. So, maybe it's that the trajectory of their writing so far has not been designed around their desires sufficiently.
So, whatever promises of approval led them in that direction in the first place, [00:25:00] maybe that approval is starting to run a little bit thin, that appeal of it, and now they no longer enjoy reading those kinds of books for that audience, for the sole purpose of approval. I don't know. Or maybe the approval has dried up and sales are going down.
So if you were doing something for approval and then the approval is slowly being withdrawn, your enjoyment may very well go down. Although to be clear, this was not really true enjoyment here that we're talking about, right? But it was enough to hold your attention and give you a few pops of acceptance that felt really good.
The other thing that may be standing between a three and their enjoyment of writing is just that they're not getting as much feedback from people. So if that's the case, then it may be that you're focusing more on quantity than the quality of feedback and that the quantity has gone down, in which case.
You have a lot of power to change where you put your attention there. Or it could be that you were writing in a hot genre, and not as many people are reading it as were [00:26:00] before, or I don't know. Maybe you just haven't been giving, you know, readers the invitation implicitly or explicitly to provide you with feedback.
So possibly you could create some channels that invite readers to give you more feedback and approval along the process, and that may help you re engage with the writing. So go share a snippet or something, you know, or you can do some of that deep inner work on people pleasing that I mentioned for the choose.
It goes for threes as well. It looks a little bit different, but at the heart, it's the same thing. So threes aren't generally called people pleasers, but all of the performance that threes feel the need to do is about trying to get people to like them or at least think about them. Which is a close second place for being liked for many, many people.
So when Enneagram 4s, the individualists, aka the authentic writers, stop enjoying writing, [00:27:00] it's usually because they feel like a part of themselves that they want to show won't be appreciated. So sometimes fours can develop this association between suffering and authenticity, or complexity and authenticity, that can make the idea of writing being enjoyable or easy set off the fear that it would somehow be shallow or inauthentic, right?
Oh, if it's enjoyable, it must be shallow. If it's easy, it must be inauthentic. So forth. If that's the case, then the work there is to really challenge the notion that suffering is somehow more authentic than enjoyment, and that complexity is always more authentic than simplicity. So maybe the writing is coming easily because you're inspired.
Maybe it has nothing to do with whether or not you're selling out or being shallow. Doing a [00:28:00] little bit of work around that and asking yourself where you have started to correlate depth An authenticity with words that aren't necessarily synonymous with it, like complexity and suffering for a start, , that can go a long way toward realizing that you are actually limiting the range of tools you have for your storytelling.
You are limiting the amount of authenticity because, listen, simplicity. Joy, happiness, ease, those are all parts of, , the human condition. Those are all authentic parts, right? So it's okay to enjoy the process, and for the, the writing process to be without a bunch of obstacles. So sometimes the most authentic thing is the most natural thing for you to express.
And sometimes depth is quite simple. So you don't have to work that hard to protect your authenticity. Okay. Basically, everything you do is authentic as a four. Just go with the flow on that. And then some of [00:29:00] the things that you do that are inauthentic are also okay, because that's part of being human.
We really can't be authentic all the time. It's okay to want to have a place in society from time to time. It's okay to want to be seen, to, uh, maybe fit in a little bit, and to need attention and recognition. That's a okay. So, you know, you can allow yourself to want that too. When Enneagram Fives, the investigators, aka the rational writers, stop enjoying writing, it's usually because the fear of not knowing enough yet has started to kick in.
It can also be much more stimulating to, like, win an argument on the internet, or to do a deep dive on a subject that you may not actually care that much about, instead of, you know, taking the risk of being seen by writing for an audience. And as long as you're not journaling, you are writing for an audience, so.
Writing can also stop being enjoyable for [00:30:00] fives if you are trying to do it entirely from your head center. So I work with quite a lot of fives who are intuitive writers., Associated more with the gut center and they get stuck because they write intuitively for a little bit until their head center starts to say, hold on, hold on, I need to make sure that this makes sense before you can proceed.
, and then making sure that everything is rational and that they know exactly why they're doing everything, you know, this is, if this is during the first draft for an intuitive writer, it's going to disrupt the flow completely. Right? It's going to, the head center is just absolutely throwing a wrench in the intuitive process.
It'll just lay the smack down on your gut center, so to speak, which is, you know, where you're writing from if you're an intuitive writer. So if you have your head center trying to do that gut center stuff, that important gut center work, , it's just not built to do that. [00:31:00] It does it very poorly. And then, at the same time, you're depriving yourself of the enjoyment of writing from your gut center.
So, a lot of fives have a hard time accessing their intuition outside of this writing process. So this encroachment of the head center on the gut center can make things Not fun.
The trigger to the sort of rational thinking's interference on the intuition is the fear of looking foolish or being exposed as incompetent. That's usually where it's coming from. There can also be a fear that the intuitive writing process will somehow get off track and waste time and energy writing things that don't.
end up making the cut in revisions. If that's what's happening, just notice that this is a scarcity pattern and that writing things that don't make the cut in revisions is just part of the drafting process. Also, it's not wasting time and [00:32:00] energy per se because there was probably something in that that you needed to know that you could only find out from writing that part that you ended up cutting.
You got more knowledge out of it in the end. So, not a waste of time and energy at all. Sometimes it just takes reminding the head center of this if you're a 5. When Enneagram 6s, the Loyalists, aka the Faithful Writers, stop enjoying writing, it's usually because they're unsure if they're doing it right.
Uh, this is just , the doubt patterns kicking in for the 6. So, there's a fear that they're not on the right path. And they're going to end up stranded in some way without any way of getting back on the path.
This may look like sitting down to write and worrying that you're not doing it correctly, or that you're screwing something up that you won't be able to fix later, or that you're doing something that is going to make people turn on you, or that you're heading in a direction that is risky. So this could be financially risky, this could be socially [00:33:00] risky, it could be creatively risky, anything.
Now, for some sixes, specifically counterphobic sixes, the risk could be a little bit of a drive, but there are still limits, and even counterphobic sixes get caught in a pattern of doubt, the reaction just looks a little bit different from the phobic sixes, so phobic sixes when , hit doubt, they're likely to stall out, , whereas counterphobic sixes are more likely to immediately pick a direction and go in that direction in a somewhat reckless manner, rather than just like, just taking a beat, sitting in that doubt for a second, trying to think rationally about it, maybe even tapping into the gut center and the heart center for more information before making that decision, uh, you know, trying to tap into that inner authority that the sixes get.
separated from. So this is not going to be the first impulse of most sixes, phobic or counterphobic, to tap into that inner authority. Either way, [00:34:00] the stronger that doubt becomes and the more it presents when they sit down to write, the less enjoyable that experience will be.
And if you're a 6 and you're experiencing doubt in a lot of other areas of your life, That's going to flood over into your writing. So it may just be that you need to give other parts of your life a little bit more consideration if you're a counterphobic 6, or you need to remember that all you can control is your reaction to the outcome and not the outcome itself, and make a decision, and then move forward if you're a phobic 6.
When Enneagram 7s, the enthusiasts, aka the enthusiastic writers, stop enjoying writing, It's usually because there is some pain they're experiencing around writing that is making their attention go to all of the other enjoyable things in their life. If you ask a 7 why they're not enjoying writing, they'll usually tell you that they're bored.
So oftentimes the feeling of deprivation, that core fear of the 7, doesn't [00:35:00] present as fear, but rather as boredom and disinterest. So when I hear a 7 say that they're bored with their manuscript or that they're bored with writing, what I often wonder is What about this is painful or uncomfortable for them and how do we build up that pain tolerance?
Is it that there is pain around the reader responses to their books recently? Is it that there is a scene that has gotten tense or uncomfortable for the Seven to write? Or is this Seven caught in a pattern of emotional shallowness as a way of avoiding deeper pain, and therefore they're unable to access that depth necessary to really sink into the story?
To find the novelty in the depth and to lose themselves? If so, If you are a seven, and you are no longer enjoying your writing, I'd look at what options you're giving yourself that are more pain free than writing, but also less gratifying. You probably need to cut those options off, at least during your writing time.
But [00:36:00] also, I would notice where you're telling yourself, hey, this is boring, because that's probably where you're experiencing pain that you haven't built up a tolerance for. But that pain is necessary to create the richness that you're seeking. When you are seeking that core desire of satisfaction.
There's gonna be some pain involved in writing a book and if your expectation does not include that you're going to wonder why you keep getting bored and why writing is just no longer enjoyable. When Enneagram 8s, the challengers, aka the bold writers, stop enjoying writing, it's usually because they've hit a point where they feel like the writing has somehow started to control them.
This could be the writing process. It could be reader expectations. It could be genre conventions. But if an 8 stops feeling in control of their writing destiny, there's a good chance that they're going to, , rebel and try to find something else that [00:37:00] makes them feel more independent and will bend to their will.
Another possibility is that the writing process has started to become easier and not as much of a challenge for an eight. That'll make them lose interest. So if it's not as much of a challenge and the eight doesn't have to use their usual tool of forcefulness on everything, then it's really not giving them the sort of reinforcement that they are strong.
You know, and it's like to have that from their pursuits. They like their pursuits to reinforce their image that they're strong. So this can, you know, go a little excessive. I don't think I'm surprising any aides by mentioning that it's can get into excess a little bit, but, , there, there can become almost an addiction to the struggle, to the, the forcing of things and challenging everything.
, so it's all in service to reinforcing that sense of self that I am strong and I am powerful. Of course, the real challenge to a challenger is to allow [00:38:00] themselves to be vulnerable and to offer themselves and those around them kindness and compassion. So if you're an 8 who is wondering if you don't enjoy writing anymore, , and what that means, you probably aren't using the word enjoyment unless you have a really strong 7 wing.
You're probably using a word like rewarding. Writing isn't rewarding anymore. If that's the case, then you're probably addicted to a struggle, and when you don't have, , you don't have anything to force because you have achieved some level of mastery, it actually freaks you out. Because you don't know where to find your sense of strength and power other than conquering something.
So, what you can work on is asking yourself how you can be a stronger writer without needing to force anything. Where can accessing the softer parts of you be the challenge that you work on in your writing? Does every likable character have to be a badass? Do all of the innocent minded, naive characters have to be presented in a negative light in your [00:39:00] story?
So, the work I'd suggest here is to notice how much of your writing career has fallen into this pattern of needing to force things. Because, spoiler, If you're caught in a pattern of forcefulness, you're not actually in control. That's right. The patterns are controlling you. You are not controlling them.
And no amount of your defense mechanism of denial can change that fact. You have to regain control of these patterns. Okay, when Enneagram Nines, the peacemakers, aka the harmonious writers, stop feeling enjoyment in their writing, it's usually A slow diminishment of that enjoyment over time. It's like a lessening, or a wearing down, or a dampening of that passion.
It usually sounds too benign, like the internal monologue of, Eh, it's not a big deal, nobody cares if I do this. Eh, nobody will notice. Right? No, it's likely that you aren't fully aware of these specific words and sentences, but the sentiment is there.[00:40:00]
So this process of the Nine telling themselves that it's not a big deal and it doesn't matter is a way of armoring up against the desire to show parts of themselves that may rock the boat. So if you're a nine, all you're doing is deadening very alive parts of yourself when you do that, and all in service of keeping a false sense of harmony.
I say it's a false sense of harmony because harmony is everything. Harmony exists simultaneously with conflict, and as long as two people are showing up fully and presently, there will be a natural level of conflict between different people who have different desires. There will be a certain amount of vying for your desire and your need to get met.
But without that friction, what's achieved is not harmony, but neglect, an abdication of one's agency. So this is really important for 9s to think about and try to internalize. What important and [00:41:00] valuable parts of yourself want to be seen, not only by others, but also by you? That you are not allowing to be seen for the sake of trying to preserve your internal peace and your interpersonal peace.
I want you to consider how you are lying by omission to try to manipulate others and avoid the unpleasantness of conflict. And the reason I'm calling you out like this so harshly, I know it's harsh. I know. The reason I'm calling it out and, and terming it lying by omission is because you've probably been rewarded in a lot of ways by people with narcissistic tendencies who like that you just go along with whatever they say.
It's very convenient for them. So it's very possible that you have not been fully awake to the reality of this impulse within yourself, but hiding parts of yourself and not showing up, Is being dishonest to yourself and others in a sort of passive aggressive way. It's, it's a form of [00:42:00] manipulation, but a very, very covert one.
Um, in a lot of ways it's another form of people pleasing. , but the people who really love you and want to see as much of you as possible, They want you to show up. So when you fall into those patterns of it doesn't matter. I don't matter. You're withholding very important things for people who care about you.
But you're also withholding parts of yourself from your own awareness. You're falling asleep to essential parts of your being, like your wants and needs. Kind of essential. So that makes it very hard to deeply engage with your writing, which is generally a fantasy of our wants and needs. If you can't access the depth of your own wants and needs, it can become very difficult to access that yearning that propels the story.
from your character's points of view. Okay, so that was a lot. But just to sum up, you may not be enjoying your writing today, but you can get back to the enjoyment. There is [00:43:00] always enjoyment to be had in writing if you can clear away whatever is pulling your attention somewhere else. Usually fear. When you notice that the enjoyment is diminishing or gone, try to remember to pause and run the diagnostic check to figure out what's going on.
So I've given you some hints based on your type, but it could be something else. Just listen closely, right? Humans are very complex.
If writing just hasn't been hitting like it used to, probably you have a deep underlying pattern that needs to be addressed. Is that the best news you've heard today? Probably not, but it is a path forward. And I've seen enough people be successful in rooting out those patterns that I hope it gives you a little bit of hope that you can get back to the point of enjoying your writing.
And when you get to that point. You'll probably be enjoying a lot of other parts about life as well. So to answer the question of what if I don't enjoy writing anymore, I will just say that if you want to get back to enjoying [00:44:00] writing, there are steps that you can actively take. You have agency in this.
You're not subject to the whims of the four winds. There are things that you can do to clear away the clutter that's making writing less enjoyable than it used to be. Your love for storytelling and your compulsion to do it, that'll always be there in some capacity.
So you don't need to be anxious about that. It's there. It's waiting. We have evolved for it to be there. It is part of the human experience. So, you know, you may need a break from the process of writing for a little bit to go handle other things or to continue with a particularly messy part of the Transformation process you might be going through, but try to practice faith that you'll come back to that enjoyment.
And if you're in a hurry to get back to it, just try some of the things that I talked about in this episode. Or you can reach out to me and we can do some one on one work together. So that's it for this episode of What If for [00:45:00] Authors. I'm Claire Taylor. Thanks for joining me. If you want to book some time with me to reconnect with the enjoyment of writing, head on over to ffs.media/schedule. And let's do it. I hope you have a great rest of your week. Happy writing!