Is Writing a Torment?

There's a quote by Flannery O'Connor that often makes the rounds of social media:

"Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay. I'm always irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality and it's very shocking to the system."

I see her point that writing isn't an escape from reality: It's an attempt to make something out of reality. But "terrible experience"? Give me a break.

It was terrible when I was once stuck in London for six weeks during a boiling hot summer in a flat with no AC and a knee injury that left me sleepless, exhausted, and in almost constant pain.

The car accident a year later where I suffered a concussion and brief amnesia, that was terrible, too.

And losing my mother to nine years of dementia before she finally died? Light years beyond terrible. But writing a novel? No way.

I've published ten mystery novels, one suspense novel, one historical novel, a vampire novella, and two literary novels along with thirteen other books in different genres. Every one of them has been a joy to write. Sure, they’ve each had challenges of form or style or research—or deadlines!—but the experience of writing them was never even remotely terrible.

That was true even with the mystery that my editor said was too long and needed to be cut by a hundred pages. And in a month, too, so we could meet the publishing schedule. I was surprised, but I enjoyed the challenge. And I got to use most of the excised material in another book. :-)

Not one of my books has made me suffer (publishing is something else entirely).

I love writing. I love re-writing. I love creating new worlds, feeling like Mandy Patinkin in Sunday in the Park with George when he sings as the painter Georges Seurat, "Look, I made a hat...Where there never was a hat."

Writing is hard work, but it's not just fun, sometimes it's bliss. As for writing a novel, what could be better? Working on one, I feel enveloped, protected, uplifted, transported.

But people who don't write, as O'Connor seems to suggest, think it's not really work at all, it's just goofing off. So I suspect some writers may feel they have to portray themselves as suffering, tormented, and besieged. If they make the profession sound as arduous as mountain climbing, or a cross they have to bear, maybe the world will take them more seriously. Does the PR convince anyone? I don't think so, given all the people over the years who've told me that they would write a book—if they only had “some free time.”

It's popular for writers to complain about how agonizing writing is and how they dread writer's block as if it were one of the Ten Plagues (or a visiting Kardashian), but the general public just doesn't seem to buy that line. Wannabe writers do, however, since they snap up books about writer's block as if they were taking a multi-vitamin or a supplement like ginkgo biloba. It's as if enjoying yourself when you write is somehow suspect, and to prepare yourself for your craft, you have to be ready to suffer. A lot. And all the time.

But when writers gripe about writing, their audience really ends up being other writers, and many of us who’ve made writing our life think, "If you’re so damned miserable, maybe it’s time to think of a career change?”

Photo by Julien L on Unsplash