Writing is hard.
Anyone who says differently is lying.
Oh, there are good days, when the thoughts tumble out faster than you can get them into your MacBook Pro.
More often than not, it’s a struggle to find the right words for what you mean to say, and do it in as few words as possible without losing – or worse – boring your reader.
I’ve been at this for years and there are times I feel like Sisyphus, destined by capricious gods to forever roll, roll, roll, a giant boulder up a hill.
In honor of tough times, here are my favorite quotes on the difficulties of putting pen to paper and why we do it anyway, from four very different sources:
…human speech is like a cracked pot on which we beat out rhythms for bears to dance to when we are striving to make music that will wring tears from the stars.
Flaubert
To get the right word in the right place is a rare achievement. To condense the diffused light of a page of thought into the luminous flash of a single sentence, is worthy to rank as a prize composition just by itself…Anybody can have ideas–the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph.
Mark Twain
There’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.
Walter Wellesley “Red” Smith
At nineteen I had wanted to write. At 40 I still wanted to write, and nothing that had happened in the years between made me any more certain that I could. It occurred to me that day in 1975 that some fevers never go away….
Joan Didion
A parting thought: If this post had a soundtrack, this would be it:
Got a favorite quote on writing? Please share in a comment.
I love quotes on writing, so much so that I have an entire page on my website dedicated to them!
http://www.penpointeditorial.com/quotationsonwriting.htm
Enjoy!
P.S. Donna Summer’s ‘She works hard for the money’ comes to mind for the ‘soundtrack’. 🙂
Yes writing is difficult, but finding time to write for me is more difficult. I have no time because I have to work full time to support myself, when I get home I’m am too tired to think about fiction or anything else.
I can write clearly and hopefully well on the weekend, but I can’t build a career or consistant quality prose by switching it on only on the weekend.
Writing is hard, finding the time to write is harder.
ah yes – Mark Twain, “one glittering paragraph…”.
For me it is never a lack of words that causes grief.
But rather, when is enough, enough.
Thank you for the gentle reminder. x
If my characters would just behave and do what they are supposed to do meeting this deadline would be easy. ~ S. Marie Vernon
Love it!
M
Beautifully said and love the quotes. I forget to be grateful when the words are flowing. When it is easy, it’s a gift. Most of the time it’s not. But it’s a hard that’s worth it.
It’s those easy times that keep us doing what we do, isn’t it?
MVR
I collect literary quotes, but one of my favorites is similar to one listed on this post:
Writing is easy; all you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead. –Gene Fowler
Some other favorites:
I’m not a very good writer, but I’m an excellent rewriter. –James Michener
The road to hell is paved with adverbs. —Stephen King
When you write you are constantly at pains to mean more than you say. –Janet Burroway
Love these, thanks for sharing.
Michelle