Let me tell you about my toxic relationship.

It starts with a blank screen. A cursor blinking like a smug metronome. Hours pass. I type words, delete them, type again, delete again. My desk becomes a graveyard of doughnut crumbs and sweet wrappers. My brain? A broken record: “You’re a fraud. Who told you you could do this?”

Kurt Vonnegut once said writing made him feel like “an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth.” 

Vonnegut, my guy, I feel you.

Writing, the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Boyfriend

Writing is the partner who ghosts you for weeks, then texts at 3 a.m. with “Hey, I’m outside. Let’s make magic.” You cave. You stay up till dawn, heartsick and euphoric, only to wake up to a draft that reads like alphabet soup.

It’s the “It’s not you, it’s me” of art forms. It makes you doubt your worth, your voice, your right to exist in a world already drowning in words. You wonder what it all means as you stare at your reflection in the dark screen (can you tell I’m watching the new season of Black Mirror?).

And yet.

The Villainy of Creation

Here’s the truth: I write because I have no choice. It’s not noble. It’s not romantic. It’s a compulsion. Like a moth to a flame, I return over and over again to the blank page, even when it burns.

Why? 

Once, mid-meltdown, I asked my sister to pray for me. She said: “Lord, as You are creating, Sope is creating.” 

I build worlds. I create people. I make strangers laugh, cry, and throw books across rooms (I hope). Writing isn’t just a craft—it’s communion. It’s the particular way I access the divine in myself and reflect God out to the world. And that’s a high no drug can touch. When it works—when the stars align and the words flow— I capture lightning in a bottle and make a new kind of reality. 

But only when it works. Because most days? Most days, it’s me vs. the cursor. Sadly, the cursor wins a lot more than I do.

I’m as big a fan of movies as I am of books, because they get the emotions just right. My love-hate affair with writing can be summed up in one scene from 10 Things I Hate About You, that oh so iconic 1999 millennial rom-com, where Kat, the angsty protagonist, reads a poem to her chaotic love interest, Patrick:

I hate the way you talk to me

And the way you cut your hair

I hate the way you drive my car

I hate it when you stare 

I hate your big dumb combat boots 

And the way you read my mind 

I hate you so much that it makes me sick 

And even makes me rhyme 

I hate the way you’re always right 

I hate it when you lie 

I hate it when you make me laugh 

Even worse when you make me cry 

I hate it when you’re not around 

And the fact that you didn’t call 

But mostly I hate the way I don’t hate you

Not even close 

Not even a little bit 

Not even at all.

Swap “Patrick” for “writing,” and Kat’s poem becomes my creative anthem. I hate writing. But I love having written.

I love the rush of a sentence that clicks. The gasp when a plot twist lands (and I am not ashamed to admit that I have gasped in wonder at my own work). Then there’s the feedback. Even on a post like this, I can wake up in the morning to a comment from a reader about starting one post and ending up reading all my posts and being forever changed.

Writing is creation. It drains me, but then stitches my pieces back together all over again.

The Creator’s Paradox

Let me take this wider because this doesn’t only apply to writing. It’s about any act of creation. Painters, musicians, bakers, architects—we’re all chasing the same paradox. Creation is torture. Creation is divinity.

Your Turn: Why Do You Create?

If you’re here, you get it. You’ve danced with the blank page, the empty canvas, the silent instrument. So tell me: Why do you keep coming back? 

What’s your “terrible boyfriend” of creation? Share your messy, unfiltered truth in the comments. Let’s toast to the agony and the ecstasy.

—Shopsy

P.S. To the ancient Greek who invented Sisyphus: You’ve met writers, haven’t you?