So, you think you’re a writer?
I did do. Writing, it turns out is bloody hard. Not the trivial scribblings on this blog. These are easy. You see, they ‘do not matter’, they are simple, stream of conciousness tracts laid down as much for my own pleasure as for any passing reader.
Don’t get me wrong, I do care enough to try to make them interesting and coherent, but I do not lavish upon these posts the care and attention I do on more formal writing (the stuff for which people pay). I do not craft them is, I suppose, the point at which I am trying, in my oh so circuitous way, to arrive.
The ever lovely Stephen Fry has posted a short post on the process of writing. In it he answers the question that both I, and it seems he, have asked many times. How do other authors write? The finished product seems so polished. Does it come easy to other authors? Is it hard for me because I am a dullard? Stephen reveals that he too finds it hard, as have many writers of note.
Seems there may be hope for me yet.
My favorite quote on this subject comes from Harlan Ellison who says “Writing is the hardest work in the world. I have been a bricklayer and a truck driver, and I tell you — as if you haven’t been told a million times already — that writing is harder. Lonelier. And nobler and more enriching.”
Writing is something that can be done by anyone, but reading others’ writing is something that must be done by everyone.