I was recently looking over the questions for a future podcast and there was one about what the best and worst parts about writing were. It gave me pause. Writing (and probably any creative endeavor to some extent) contains multitudes. The good, the bad, the pleasantly and not-so-pleasantly unexpected, the disheartening, the exciting, and even the monotonous. Becoming a writer, the process and journey of it, spans the entire field. But if I had advice to give to someone just starting out, what would I say the best and worst thing is?

It might be the same thing.

All that I didn’t know and still don’t know about writing. Even after nearly twenty novels, countless short stories, hundreds of poems and ten years worth of blog posts, I still don’t know how to write. Not really. There are so many arenas within the vast city of literary skill that I have yet to visit, let alone conquer. And just when I think I’ve got it down, that I’ve perfected a skill, or mastered a genre, something comes along to prove me wrong. Someone better shows up to hand me a big, steaming plate of hubris.

And that’s both exciting and enraging.

That there will always be something to learn, emboldens me to stay curious and interested. That through all my countless mistakes, knowing that I’m still not done making them is frustrating. Writing is, in some ways, an unhealthy, semi-psychotic relationship with a muse that is ever changing, and fickle as Tyche. How some times I can sit down at my desk and unexpectedly write the most beautiful heart-dropping poem, and the next day not be able to pull together a coherent blog post makes it hard to feel secure in my future as a writer.

And that’s beautiful too.

Not knowing how long you’ll have the drive, desire, and time to create makes every moment doing it a celebration of being human. That in the trenches of editing or rewriting it can feel like a nine-tailed flogging and yet we still persevere is a testament to our ability to grow through the muck of the seemingly impossible. Not knowing where I will go is both terrifying and exciting. Not knowing what I’ll write next is the same.

Ten years ago, if asked the same thing I would have said the best thing was the writing itself and the worst thing was a poor review. Today I would say the best part is the writing, and the worst part is writing something that could be my last project. Time has shifted my perspective from outsider’s viewpoints being the rusty sword to the heart, to the inability to write or know how to write what I want to as being the decimation of my creative soul.

I don’t really have a resolution here. But maybe having the knowledge that it’s important for me to travel the path of what I love in writing, and not try to attach the expectations of future projects to them. Maybe the worst thing, that I won’t know enough to write another book, is a good enough driving factor to keep me curious. To encourage me to branch out, to embrace being the perpetual idiot in exchange for constantly tripping after that distant, beautiful horizon.