On Process: What I Am Learning to Ignore

There is a voice in my head and maybe you have the same one.

It does not have a face. It does not have a name. But I know exactly when it speaks.

It speaks when I sit down to write and the first sentence does not come easily. See? You have nothing to say.

It speaks when I read something brilliant by another writer. You will never be that good. Why are you even trying?

It speaks when I finish a draft and feel proud for approximately four minutes. That is not finished. That is not good enough. Someone else already wrote this, and they wrote it better.

The voice is relentless. It does not take days off. It does not care if I am tired or sad or just trying my best.

I used to think the voice was telling me the truth.

I do not think that anymore.

Here is what I am learning to ignore.

1. The comparison game.**

There will always be someone who writes faster than me. Someone with more Substack subscribers. Someone whose sentences look effortless in a way mine never do.

I used to scroll through other writers' work and feel small. Not inspired. Just... small.

Now I am trying something different. I am learning to look at good work and say that is beautiful without adding and I am ugly next to it.

Their success is not my failure. Their voice is not my silence. There is room for all of us.

The voice wants me to believe otherwise. The voice lies.

2. The first draft judgment.

The voice loves to critique my work before it is even finished.

*This paragraph is clumsy.***This dialogue sounds fake. Who is going to read this?

I used to listen. I used to stop writing and start editing — or worse, stop writing entirely.

Now I am learning to say: Not yet.

The first draft is allowed to be bad. The first draft is supposed to be bad. The first draft is just me telling myself the story so I can fix it later.

The voice does not understand process. The voice wants perfection immediately. The voice has never written anything in its life.

I am learning to ignore it until the second draft.

3. The platform's limitations.**

Tuhat taught me this one the hard way.

The platform does not understand me. It puts pictures in the wrong place. It lies about word counts. It makes publishing feel like pulling teeth.

For a while, I thought that meant I was doing something wrong.

Now I understand: the platform is just a tool. A clunky, old-school, badly designed tool. But it is not the boss of me.

I am learning to ignore what Tuhat cannot do and focus on what it can do. It can hold my words. It can be a home for my process. It can — apparently — even send a reader to my Substack every once in a while.

The rest? The bad formatting? The missing features? The silent publish button?

Ignored.

4. The voice that says I am not a real writer.

This is the big one.

The voice loves to tell me that real writers have MFAs. Real writers get published in fancy journals. Real writers do not struggle with the middle or drink too much tea or stare at the wall for twenty minutes before typing a single word.

I used to believe that voice.

Now I know: a real writer is someone who writes. That is it. That is the whole definition.

I write. Therefore I am a writer.

The voice can scream all it wants. I am not listening anymore.

Building this muscle takes time.

I still hear the voice. Every day. It has not gotten quieter. I have just gotten better at recognizing it for what it is: fear wearing a clever disguise.

Fear of failure. Fear of judgment. Fear that I am not enough.

The voice is not my enemy. It is trying to protect me from disappointment. But its protection is suffocating me.

So I am learning to thank the voice and then ignore it.

Thank you for your concern. I am going to write anyway.

Some days are easier than others.

Some days the voice is loud and I am tired and I believe every horrible thing it says. Those days, I write badly or I do not write at all.

But I come back the next day. And the next. And the next.

That is the only victory that matters. Not silencing the voice forever. Just showing up anyway.

So if you have a voice like mine — loud, cruel, persistent — I see you.

You are not alone. You are not broken. You are just human.

And the voice?

Keep learning to ignore it.

Not because it will ever go away. Because your words matter more than its fear.

Now go write something. The voice is waiting. Do not listen.

Here is the thing I am still learning.

The voice does not need to be defeated. It just needs to be outnumbered.

Every time I write a sentence, that is one more voice on my side. Every time I finish a draft, that is one more piece of evidence that the cruel voice is wrong. Every time someone reads my work — even one person, even on Tuhat — that is another witness.

I am building a chorus. Slowly. Quietly. One word at a time.

The cruel voice is loud. But it is alone.

I am learning to ignore it by surrounding myself with proof that it lies.

The proof is on my Substack. On svarnac.com. On this ugly, beautiful, impossible platform that sent me a reader I never expected.

The proof is the work itself.

So I keep writing. Not because the voice stopped. Because I stopped caring whether it ever does.

The voice is loud. But you are louder. Keep going!

No matter what anyone says, your words matter and your voice belongs! We need your heart, your dreams out there!