Sunday, March 15, 2009

Do you enjoy writing?

That's my question of the day: Do you enjoy writing?

I read a few interesting articles today. First, Nathan Bransford, a literary agent, wrote this on his blog:
Writers are dreamers, and dreamers tend to daydream about the future while concocting wildly optimistic scenarios that involve bestsellordom, riches, and interviews with Ryan Seacrest. In doing so they forget to enjoy the present. I call this the "if only" game. You know how it goes: if only I could find an agent, then I'll be happy. When you have an agent, then it becomes: if only I could get published, then I'll be happy. And so on. The only way to stay sane in the business is to enjoy every step as you're actually experiencing it. Happiness is not around the bend. It's found in the present. Because writing is pretty great -- otherwise why are you doing it?
Linked on his blog, nathanbransford.blogspot.com.

But then I also read this article from the Guardian, where authors who write for a living talked about how they felt about writing. And their milage certainly varied.

For instance, John Banville: "The struggle of writing is fraught with a specialised form of anguish, the anguish of knowing one will never get it right, that one will always fail, and that all one can hope to do is 'fail better', as Beckett recommends. The pleasure of writing is in the preparation, not the execution, and certainly not in the thing executed. The novelist daily at his desk eats ashes, and if occasionally he encounters a diamond he is likely to break a tooth on it. Money is necessary to pay the dentist's bills."

and cheerful Amit Chaudhuri: "Writing novels is no fun; nor is, generally speaking, reading novels. Reading people writing about novels is not always fun, either, because relatively little of this kind of writing is any good. Then there's the group of people who don't enjoy being novelists, to which I probably belong; whose lives are at once shaped and defined by, and to some extent entrapped in, the act of writing fiction."

I think I enjoy writing. But sometimes, I just don't want... it's so much effort and so much frustration.

Do you enjoy writing? And if so, what do you enjoy about it?

2 comments:

morrow said...

Writing is a love hate relationship. It can feel so good sometimes and other times it is fraught with anguish and frustration.

Stephanie said...

I do love the creative process. I made a New Year's resolution to finish my 3rd novel and commit myself to the time to do it. I promised to write 1000 words a day. And I didn't make the word count every day, but I did most days and then some. And I made sure I wrote every day....I think I missed one day because of illness and hated that! By the 25th of January, I had added over 30,000 words to my novel and finished it. I was on such a creative high! I felt to acomplished!!! Then I started the editing process....and then began the headaches.....