Why Is Writing So Hard?

People who do not call themselves writers sometimes get impatient with those of us who do. The non-writers wonder, why all the agonizing and whining? If you have something to write, why not just write it and be done with it? What’s so hard about it?

Why do you need all those writers conferences to commiserate and moan about an activity—writing—that you supposedly love?

It’s a fair point, and yet, writers are very familiar with all those agonizing hours we spend squirming, staring at walls, searching for words, deleting words, and writing through drafts that won’t quite come together. Why such struggle?

I finally figured out why writing is so hard.

It came to me through a handout that was given to me by my friend David Esselstrom. It concerns a book called Copia: Foundations of the Abundant Style, published by Erasmus in 1512. The handout shows variations in the ways that someone might write the idea, “Your letter mightily pleased me.” Here are a few:

“To a wonderful degree did your letter please me.”

“By your letter I was mightily pleased.”

“I was exceeding pleased by your letter.”

“Your affectionate letter brought me unbelievable pleasure.”

This list goes on for three pagesand includes 83 different ways of expressing the idea. And we could easily add many more.

As I read through this list, becoming more and more agitated without really knowing why, it finally occurred to me why writing is so hard: There are too many choices.

The reason those similar but slightly varied sentences made me so uncomfortable is because they sounded like a mockery of my own writing process. I, too, can think of at least 83 ways of writing each sentence, and sometimes it’s hard to know which one is right. It’s why I sometimes take an absurdly long time even to write something as simple as an email or a thank you card. These things can actually be harderfor writers than non-writers because the writers see the dozens of choices, and those choices can be paralyzing.

The larger the project, the more the choices and difficulties multiply. Let’s say you want to write a nonfiction book (writing fiction raises a different set of issues that are equally daunting). The idea comes to you. You write it down. Is the idea too narrow? Too broad? You revise. You refine. You throw it out. You start again. Have you captured it in a way that gets at the essence of what makes this worth doing? Is it clear? Is it reader-friendly? Is it compelling?

You finally settle on the idea. Maybe you scratch out an outline. You can’t cover everything. What is crucial to include? What should you leave out? How can this be divided into chapters? How many chapters? In what order? What will best capture the progression of ideas? Each of these questions has the potential to disrupt everything you have decided up to that point. You may have to go back to the beginning.

Once you start writing, what voice do you take on for this project? Is it personal? Scholarly? Humorous? Confessional? Who is the audience, and how can you best appeal to them? Should you include explanatory footnotes, for example? Would those enhance your credibility, or would they put readers off?

As you write each chapter, what can you start with that will engage the reader? Maybe you can think of 10 or 15 ways of doing that. Which will you choose? How long should each chapter be? What evidence should you include? How much of your research should you

istock/zwawol

show, and how do you present it? How much do you quote? How much do you paraphrase? How do you weave your own ideas into the ideas of others? You don’t want the chapter to get bogged down, but neither do you want to skim too lightly over important ideas. How do you find balance?

After you finally settle on how to structure the chapter, you still have to write all those pesky sentences, and each one offers 83 or more possibilities.

As you continue this process day after day, something that felt brilliant on the day you wrote it may strike you as stupid and embarrassing when you read it the next day. Maybe you should switch those chapters around. Delete that paragraph. Revise that sentence.

Doubts creep in. Insecurities abound. Should you even be writing this book? What if you fail? What if everyone reads it and laughs at you? You consider tossing the whole thing aside. On the other hand, insecure moments may alternate with delusions of grandeur. This paragraph is brilliant! You’re a genius! This book will be a bestseller that absolutely everyone will read!

With all these obstacles that writers face, the real question may be not why writers agonize so much, but rather how they manage to finish anything at all.  So, non-writers, I would plead with you, have patience with us. We’re not just whiny babies. This really is hard. We need all the love we can get.