I was reading Gaudy Night, the Dorothy Sayers novel first published in 1936, when I came upon this passage:
“Mr. Arbuthnot said ‘Are you writing any more books?’
“Suppressing the rage that this question always rouses in a professional writer, Harriet admitted that she was.
“‘It must be splendid to be able to write,’ said Mr. Arbuthnot. ‘I often think I could spin a good yarn myself… ‘”
The exchange is one I have often had. It conveys the curious public response to writers and their writing, that the making of books is a rather casual affair. That it is not work as commonly defined. Not real work. Not hard work.
George Bernard Shaw once said, “Hard writing makes easy reading.” Equally true is that easy reading masks hard writing. Indeed, writing is by and large a hidden profession. Readers see what is written, not how it is written.
Writers will share the difficulty of writing among themselves. Only rarely will they share that effort with the public. I invite readers here to suggest why.
2 thoughts on “An invitation to share”
I think that writers have a different frame of mind and have to “go into a zone” to work. I know from writing papers in college and proofreading my children’s papers, I have to be in the right set of mind to be successful to understand what I am writing/reading. Just like any individual who is great at their job, they have to set their mind to the task at hand to be completely successfully at what they do. This is especially true for people who work with other individuals or whose work others dependent upon. You don’t see doctors, lawyers, accountants, teachers, electricians, etc. thinking about mowing their lawns when they are working or their time is wasted. So like writers, you share your difficulty with your peers as they understand your pain. They live it too just as others in other professions, experience theirs.
Writing is so individual, even among writers talking about the craft it can be uncomfortable. At my local writers group, there can be squirmy feelings when someone is talking about pounding out 2–5 thousand words a day while another struggles for one page. Since there is no one rule fits all, it’s easy to feel like you aren’t doing it right. You might not want to talk about your process, in fear of being deemed an impostor.