I Love to Write, Until I Have To…

There’s a strange tension that lives at the heart of being a writer: I love writing… but I hate having to write.

Give me a quiet afternoon, a cup of something warm, and a blank page, and I’ll happily pour out thoughts. I love the rhythm of sentences, the challenge of chasing down the perfect word, the way a paragraph can shape a mood or a moment. Writing feels like breathing on days when I don’t have to think too hard about it.

But slap a deadline on it? Tell me I have to write something, right now, and suddenly I forget how words work. My brain becomes a wasteland of half-formed ideas and snack cravings. I’ll find myself cleaning the kitchen, reorganizing my Spotify playlists, or taking a very urgent walk around the block - anything to avoid the task at hand.

It's not that the love disappears. It’s just that the freedom does. When writing turns into an obligation instead of an outlet, it feels more like pulling teeth than pulling ideas from thin air. And yet, even in those moments, I know I’ll come back to it. Because nothing else scratches the same itch. No matter how many times I swear I’m done, I always return - for the joy of shaping something out of nothing, for the magic that sometimes sparks in the middle of a sentence.

So yeah, I love writing. Just… maybe not right now.