Why Writing Is Both Tougher and Easier Than It Looks

1.1.2020 

Let’s get into this without any preamble (I love preambles, but, oh well); if I were to lay a paper in front of me, and expect words to come dancing out of my head, that would mean I live in a delusional fantasy and need to return to reality NOW.

There are more than hundred things wrong with this fantastical situation. First, words do NOT behave like that; they are very rarely so complaisant. If you said they caused a stampede in your head, now that I would believe. 

Second, even IF words just poured out like enthusiastic children from a bus, they are very likely the wrong words and not at all suited to your topic or even your genre. For example, if I wanted to write something humorous, the only words I’d be able to think of first off would be words like “morbid” and “dismal”. 

Wow. This did end up being a preamble after all. I don’t mind at all- I must have mentioned that I love preambles. The only thing that annoys me is that I’d like to have known that that was a preamble while writing it not after. 

Now to the body of this piece: (of which I am growing more and more unsure, simply because I seem to be straying from the topic again. This is an endearing quality, not off-putting, okay?) writing can be challenging even after you have passed the stages of inspiration and finding the right words. 

I am not talking about poetry here as that is a whole other topic we should save for another, better moment, because I am in grave danger of straying again, and believe you me, if you are finding this piece as confusing as I am, you do not want more unrelated but enthusiastic paragraphs added to your existing gallimaufry of a literary plate.

When you write a story with characters and events and a plotline, you have it all planned out in your head with fancy dialogues and witty conversations. Unfortunately, after the first two paragraphs or -if you are delusional enough- the first two pages, when you pause to reread your writing, it hits you that your characters are not behaving like themselves and to add insult to injury, your plot is not what it was when you began.

Has this ever happened to you? Someone you think you know very well, does something totally unlike them and you gaze at them in disbelief and horror and wonder if they are the same person they were two minutes ago? Well, this happens on a regular basis when you write. If this occurrence were so regular, one would think you’d be able to predict it or catch it in the act. Sorry to say, but the fact that you have actually assumed that you have such an impossible ability shows just how gullible you truly are.

In case I’ve got you dreading writing and while reading this, promising to never go through such an ordeal, I’d better change tack and repair the damage I’ve done.

Writing, quite contradictorily, is also extremely easy. More often than not, when you put pen to paper, there is a flooding of words, and even if you have to be armed with a fishing net to find it, you are bound to find some words that are of use to you. 

Listen, I am not being overly optimistic, though obviously, any longsuffering reader of all that I said above would disagree.

Alright, it is time I acknowledge to myself what everyone has figured out already: that rather than talking about what is difficult and easy about writing, I have talked about what is difficult about writing and now am trying to mollify you, the reader, if you've successfully performed the Herculean task of reading so far.

Now that that’s out of the way, let me assure you that these self motivated journeys your plots constantly take and the number of times your characters obstinately refuse to do as you tell them, makes your story all the more worth it once you have finally reached the end. And then you can have a brief moment where you look back at that period with a kind of hazy nostalgia before you go and do the same thing again.

But when all’s said and done, though the experience of writing may seem like a storybook farmyard where the words, plot and characters are the uncontrollable over-enthusiastic farm animals while I am the sweaty, harassed farmer who is too busy trying to restore order to do my own work; it is a completely obstinate, absolutely delightful something that I couldn’t live without even if I’ve said (God forbid) that I could. 

And if this were a movie, now would be the time I would turn to Writing (who'd be sitting on a bench with me, mind you), and say, "You know I love you."