Guilt is a Human Thing
This is a blog I set up for myself as a writer, and now I seem to have stepped of that track or niche, that of a Writers blog. into the niche of the New Age/Self Help realm. But fear not, there is method in my ‘madness’.
Guilt and being a writer are two subjects that go together well, with possible deadlines looming for publishers and your books, of for getting something written for a particular purpose, but you’ve spent untold time flaffing around on Social Media, yet again, instead of attended to actually writing something more than comments on somebody else’s ‘thing’.
Then you feel guilty, and hate yourself, and possibly seek solace in the comfort of a much loved blog, or website of some other writer’s. And after some thought, and possibly with reminders from someone else (a publisher wanting that manuscript you promised?), well then you get back to actually doing the writing you were ‘supposed’ to be doing.
But there’s the guilt happening, and surely feeling guilty is a bad and stressful thing, right? Actually, that is only true sometimes. Guilt is very much a human emotion. Animals don’t feel guilt. If you have a dog, and you feel it shows guilt, when you find out it has done a bad thing – eating something meant for the humans, or had an ‘accident’ inside, the dog looks up at you with those big brown guilty eyes, and you may forgive them.
But I don’t think that was guilt. Dogs are excellent at picking up human emotions, and that dog could see and feel your anger and disappointment, at what happened. Not guilty though, that hangdog face on the dog shows it is worried, not guilty. Dogs don’t like it when their owner is upset, they aren’t guilty though, worried about you being upset, or worried about what your actions may be, because they may have learned that when you act like that, they may end up getting a belting, so of course they’re worried.
This is an excellent little post on a website about this matter, I recommend you go have a look. The thing it shows adds to what I wrote about guilt, with a clever little experiment to prove the idea that dogs do not have guilt. They end the post with that silly thing about cats and dogs, where they say cats have staff, not owners, which was actually funny the first thousand times I read it, but hmm, not so much nowadays, but still …
Moving Back to Humans
Humans certainly can feel guilt, but that guilt isn’t always a bad and stressful thing. Taking it back to my wasting time on Social Media thing, when a writer (Me/I) wastes writing time of fluff and nonsense, they can hate themselves forever, or they can pull up their socks and get right back into getting that writing done. Books don’t write themselves, books need a writer to write them, before they can get published.
Beating yourself up with guilt, and not getting on to that writing asap won’t help at all. It may cause you stress, and stress is certainly not a good thing for anyone, whether they are writer or not. A stressed body is an unhealthy body, if we’re talking about mental stress. A stressed body, can become a body burdened with illness. Be careful of yourself, and stay away from bad stress!
Good stress, as that website post explains, can be beneficial though, so if you can use stress in good ways, excellent, well done, it may be the thing you need to get, and keep you on track with your writing!
A Happy Ending to the Story
So all of this can tell you that getting on with your writing instead of flaffing around online (or in other, non-productive ways), these things can cause guilt and stress. That guilt/stress dynamic can be a thing that breaks you down, or it can be a thing that makes you stand up tall and resolute, to get you right back on track with your writing!
And getting you writing written, surely that is a great thing if you are a writer! Buster the Dog, who lives inside my head, who has helped me write three dog-related books so far, he says ‘Woof!, get on with it Human, write those words, then take me for a walk!’
Carolyn Cordon - Creative 
Yes, Carolyn we all feel guilt. It could be for not getting on with writing. It could be because we spent all day writing instead of doing house work and now there are no clean dishes, laundry is full of dirty clothes, floors are unswept etc. It could be because someone told us we should be using social media to promote our writing but we have been actually writing articles, the novel or whatever instead.
As you said, feeling guilt is a human thing.
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Just think, if we were male writers we might have a wife to deal with the household chores, so that would be one cause of guilt gone. But of course, men have their own chores to do, outside for the most part. And these days, such ‘gendered’ thoughts are very much not applicable as a given. My husband does most of the housework, and I am very grateful for that. But I’m guilty about the fact that he does most of the housework, and most of the outside work as well.
And of course, I’m feeling guilty about the unfinished novel sitting here on this laptop I’m typing away on, instead of working on my novel … and the children’s picture book I’ve begun working on, and now work has stopped. There’s a children’s chapter book there too, begun, then work stopped … Blogging continues, fiction ends. There’s a non-fiction book partly written too though, so I can say I’ve committed myself to non-fiction at the time.
Guilty of neglecting some of my writing projects, or am I simply working on increasing my profile as a writer, a necessary step toward increasing book sales, and other marketing aspects of the writing life?
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As The Dream Academy say in their 1985 hit ‘Life in a Northern Town’: “Take it easy on yourself”
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I like that song quite a bit, John, I don’t particularly recall those lyrics, but I’m no expert at song lyrics.
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