I’ve been reading a lot about writing lately, and one theme that comes up a lot is how writing is really hard and how normal people with normal goals don’t appreciate how hard writing is, even when writers tell them about it over and over and over again. As a neighbor points out to critic/novelist Annie Dillard in her book The Writing Life, “That’s like a factory employee going to work every day even though he hates it. Why do you do it?”
Dear reader, this is the worst question you could ever ask a writer. If you yourself are a writer, you’re nodding. If you’re not, please heed my advice and do not ask it ever (or ever again). It’s like pouring salt on a slug and expecting the poor thing to dance.
Anywho. Haphazard gastropod analogies notwithstanding, I’m glad that other writers feel the same way I do. For many years I assumed I was a big baby with my “poor me”s and “mental anguish”es and “oh, the trials of the mind simply fell me!”isms. While this may still be true, I feel vindicated by this funny, insightful article from author Michael Cunningham.
As a novelist, I learned long ago that my interest in talking about how very difficult it is to write fiction exceeds almost everybody’s interest in hearing about it. I rarely bring the subject up, any more than I expect, in old age, to go on at length about my joint pains or the fact that everything and everyone used to be better than they are now. Every writer I know, however, is obsessed by the subject, and often when we’re alone together we do, in fact, with a sense of guilty abandon, spend a certain amount of time buzzing about how unbelievably, monumentally difficult writing actually is; what fools we are for having taken it up in the first place; and how often we contemplate abandoning the pursuit altogether and going into another line of work, though most of us are too old for go-go dancing and too inept for carpentry.
To learn more about the writing underground or revel in how justified your whining is, click here. Happy reading!
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