The phrase I don’t like writing, but I like having written has previously been attributed to writer, critic and wit Dorothy Parker. There is doubt that Parker can be credited with this observation. It appears, instead, to have been 19th century author Frank Parker, who also added, in a letter discovered after his death that ‘[I] Hate the effort of driving pen from line to line, work only three hours a day, but work every day.’
No matter who coined the phrase, it means, we may suppose, that writing can be a slog. First, the blank page staring back at you. Then conjuring up the mental magic of inspiration, the getting the words onto paper, shaping them from thought into shared reality. Yet writers persist. Because somewhere, there is a glowing satisfaction to be had – of getting into the zone, perhaps, or of the completed text. When it’s been passed through the mill of creative production once and again. When it works. When it’s good enough to put out there.
Few jobs are without their ups and downsides – and being a writer, whether of fact or fiction, is ultimately a job. A paid one, if you are talented – and lucky. In such cases, there is the extrinsic motivation of financial reward. Take the author Colm Toíbín, for instance, who , when asked which of his books he most enjoyed writing answered: “No enjoyment. No, none,” and cited money as the most enjoyable aspect of a writer’s life. It’s an admission that is refreshingly frank.
Still, it’s interesting to note how many writers appear to have a love / hate relationship for quite different reasons, ones to do with the creative process. Ones that seem to drag themselves, apprehensive and reluctant, through their writing to reach the highs of success.
Novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard, for example, described writing as most ‘frightening’, finding it ‘much too anxious a business’. But she also admitted to being unable to stop because ‘When you write something which comes off, it’s a feeling like no other,’ and ‘It’s like being visited by something outside yourself.’ Which seems as good a description of being in creative ‘flow’ as any other. Author Rose Tremain similarly observed that writing sometimes ‘does feel punishingly arduous’, but also that she had ‘found profound happiness and intellectual stimulation in the act of writing.’
So there is a satisfaction here, or a happiness, more intense perhaps than anything to be found elsewhere in life. Writer and scholar Gloria E. Anzaldúa answered the question ‘Why am I compelled to write?’ by saying: ‘Because the world I create in the writing compensates for what the real world does not give me.’ And ‘because I’m scared of writing, but I’m more scared of not writing.’
Whatever the gain, is it worth the pain? Only the writer can say.
Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash
Interesting, i Actually Started Writing to Get my Mind off
The Worst Pain Known to
Humankind No Drug
Would Touch, From
Wake to Sleep, Type Two
Trigeminal Neuralgia; Several
MiLLioN Words And 33 Months
Into the Escape A Creative Flow
Of Meditative Free Verse Poetry
Naturally Came And Transformed
my Words Organic In Other Words
They Became Human With Colorful
(And So Did i)
Emotions All The Pain And Numb
Went Away Of A Synergy of 19
Life Threatening Disorders…
Every Word Now is Literally
Heaven All 9.5 MiLLioN
Words of The Longest
EPiC Long Form Poem
Ever in 95 Months Now
And 15,133 Miles of
Public Dance Free
FLoWinG Meditation
Coloring Heaven Same
Since the Pain And Numb
Went Away With The Start
Of the “SonG oF mY SoUL”
Heaven is What We Do
When We Become
A Dance and
Song
Of Life
Whole
Complete
While Always
Enough Ever Word
Sacred Song Ever Step
Holy Dance Naturally All
Of
Existence
Tasting Real
‘God’ 100 Percent
Faith in Every Step, Word
And
Breath
No Writer’s
Block Or Living
Dead HeaR Now
The
Dance
And Song Breath
Loving Free Now
😊🎶🎼🌈🏝
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Thank you for your lyrical response, your playful but candid way with words. ‘They Became Human With Colorful’: perfection. I am so sorry to hear of your pain, and hope that writing had indeed been salvation and release.
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Thanks So Much
For The Inspiration
With Asperger’s
Syndrome on
The Autism
Spectrum
Coloring
my Easter
Egg Indeed
Took All The
Numb And Pain
Away Hehe Graduating
With A Triple Major at
UNiVersity A 500 Word
Essay i Struggled With
Close to The Top of
The Multiple
Choice School
Making A Firstly,
Secondly, in
Conclusion
More Than
A Technical
List of Bulleted
Facts… Yes.. Change Is
Possible…
30 Years
Later
At
53
Making
Grey Scale
Pain And Numb
Life New Colors in
Rainbows Of Creativity
It Just
Took The
Worst
Pain
Known
To Humankind
In Challenge
To Unpack the
More Colorful
Human
Epigenetic
Potential in
One Lifetime
For me Then
Space Tween
Hell
And
Heaven Breathing Now
MaKinG Miracles Real😊🎼
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Congratulations on your creation of your own life. This is close to home, I look at my boy, on the spectrum, looking forward to getting to university (college). I know school has been tough, socially, and because his obvious intelligence and enthusiasms often do not make their way into grades and the limited version of ‘intelligence’ the system requires. My heart squeezes in pain for him. If he can get to this next steps, I know he can go out there and build his life, in his way as himself.
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SMiles The Best Gift
i See Are Loved Ones
Who Never Give Up
On Us
No Matter
What How
Rare Unconditional
Love How Healing
How Life Saving
How Life Giving
When Staying
Home
To Always
Give Share Care
Honestly All i Wanted
To Do Is Be Human
i Suppose
It is We Who
Have to Achieve
It Who See Being
Human is Heaven
Thanks Best Wishes
To Your Son On The
Spectrum Love Is Real😊
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Thank you so much. He’s so wonderful. You never want people to see your kids any other way but wonderful, too. Totally unrealistic! But yes, unconditional love is the answer.
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Yes Indeed
Thanks to
You too😊
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It would be interesting to know how many writers, in addition to Colm, do it strictly for the money.
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I am curious, too. The idea that ‘literary’ writers do it for passion and ‘genre’ / popular fiction writers for money is far too simplistic. I am torn between thinking Toíbín is either being very frank or mischievous.
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And there also are the writers that don’t write books. They far outnumber those that write books.
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I guess in the latter, there’s much more ‘writing to order’ for the non-fiction writer. Writing for cash alone must be inevitable sometimes.
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A really interesting post
I discovered some aspects of the writing process that I hadn’t thought of before
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Very well written. The dilemma of being a writer. Often when we are driven by the recognition bug it seldom spares but if writer writes to liberate the inner turmoil it is a dazzling profession
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Yes, I think where there is the creative drive, there is so much more than extrinsic motivation. In fact, material rewards are unlikely!
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Well put. Always lovely read your posts
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Love this so much. This is why I continue to write. I actually DO love the process. I don’t love the editing process as much. But I do typically like the result after the project is done. Having made only a limited amount in a professional capacity at a writer, I’m facing down my doubt to figure out ways to pursue that path more. And even if my first book sells less than 10 copies, the joy I’ve had in working on it keeps me going. 🙂
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There are some aspects of writing that I’m not the biggest fan of (editing, promoting, etc.). However, I never thought of liking “having written” vs. “writing.” While I feel above-average pride for some of my pieces, I definitely like writing!
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Is it worth it? Of course. Not monetarily of course. Few writers, very few can live on their writings.How many painters whose works now go at auction for millions of bucks died of misery? But once the story is out on paper… words were flying in the air, and you caught them and turned them into s story…
Worth it? Absolument.
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I agree that, critically, the internal motivation and satisfaction have to be found.
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I remember clearly the first short story I wrote. “Piano”. I had it in my head. Took advantage of a business trip in NY and my very first laptop to see if “I could” write a short story. Something that “worked”. A nice feeling.
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