Personal identity and Investment in Writing

But here I am writing anyway. It is strange how caught up our personal identities become in our work. Maybe it helps us do a better job, but it can be destructive too. Why can it help us do a better job? Because we are personally invested. But the downside is that it means I have slipped again into letting my happiness depend on something not completely in my control.

But how to escape that? Writing takes up most my waking hours. I use pieces of me in my books. I make myself vulnerable. And I'm making something that depends on me. How can I not be inveested?

On the other hand, everyone has bad writing hours, days, weeks, or even more. My default answer, unfortunately, is to plow through it until I wreck my physical and mental health. Fortunately, I now have someone in my life who won't let me do that to myself.

The answer seems to be allow personal investment without allowing happiness to depend on the success or failure of my work. Small amounts of happiness and failure are probably normal but anything can be taken to extremes. Easier said than done.

How do you manage the ups and downs of writing? How do you manage the balance of personal investment and identity? Or are you likee me and haven't quite figured it out?