Writer's Regret

Being a Writer

By Jack Thomas

I sit and write.

Time flies, and I can’t bear the sense that I’ve gotten nowhere.

Close the laptop. Move on. Tomorrow’s another day.

Morning. I slug out of bed, run through the same meaningless rituals.
Eat. Shower. Breathe. Function.
Land in front of the laptop.

And I sit.
And I wait.
And I stare.

I read before I write, then delete.
Write. Delete. Again. Again.

Another day gone. Word count? Less than yesterday.
Confidence? Lower.
I find flaws, rip holes, can’t think of the repairs.

Close the laptop. Move on.

The next day:

The same loop.

Talk to people I hate just to pretend I’m functioning.
Wander the streets looking for inspiration.
Set a fire just to feel something.

The flames do their job—not what I hoped,
but they cloud things up nicely.
Now I can’t focus.
But I sit here anyway,
because I said I would,
and I’ll stare at this screen
until something lands.
Anything.

This cycle drags on—days into weeks, weeks into months.

Nine months.

Nine months of staring at pages, chasing ghosts,
wrestling words until they break.

At some point, I kill the word count. Don’t need that mockery.
Turn it back on when I think the story’s done.

It’s not done.

It’s twice the intended length.

A rush—adrenaline surges.

Then the crash.

This was the fun part.

Now comes the clean-up.

The child inside me? Gone.
The one who built this thing? Asleep.
The adult steps in—the one who hates everything.

The editor. The butcher. The surgeon.

Does the story even make sense?
Is it bloated?
Are there missing pieces?
Did I write something real, or just vomit onto the page?

The child doesn’t care about this. He just makes things.
The adult? He has to fix them.

The adult tears things down,
kills darlings,
watches what once felt perfect turn to garbage.

“This was a mistake.”
“What the hell was I thinking?”
“Why did I ever believe I could write?”

But the adult has no choice.

The child creates, but the adult corrects.

The child dreams, but the adult doubts.

The child builds castles of clay,
the adult knocks them halfway down.

But the adult teaches. The child learns.

Somewhere deep in my mind, the child waits for his next chance.
He’s refueling, grabbing pieces of the world,
collecting nonsense, stacking it all together,
ready to call it a masterpiece.

Meanwhile, the adult drowns in the writer’s regret.

The book is done.

It’s leaving me.

No locking it away. No stopping it.

It’ll see light, and I’ll do it all over again.
Love it. Hate it. Repeat.

I call it being a writer.