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An invitation to share

Gaudy NightI 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”

  1. 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.

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  2. 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.

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