When Writing Is Fun
I went to see SOMETHING ROTTEN this week, a very enjoyable show. In it there's a number in which Shakespeare sings about it being "Hard to Be the Bard." That got me thinking about writing and the levels of difficulty involved. It is hard, but it's also fun. It's hard to write the whole thing . I can't tell you how many people I've met who have three (or five or eight) chapters of a novel written but just can't go farther. Writers get that, but they also get past it. It's hard to make it good . Writing well takes a lot of understanding of language, story, syntax, conversation, style, character--all those things your English teacher used to go on about. They matter. It might be true that everyone has a story inside, but not everyone is ready to tell it well enough that others want to read it. It's hard to make it better. Another group I meet a lot are those who have written their masterpiece and can see absolutely nothing wrong with it. Fi...