Writer Gay Talese has an interesting little essay on the Borders.com web site. The title is, "Writing Well Hurts." Here's part of it:
"Writers are enslaved to their work. The reader should enjoy the act of reading a book—for the reader, it should be like eating a box of chocolates; for the writer, the act of writing should be a suffering experience, all consuming and dedicated to doing the very best work they're capable of doing, and to achieve this "best" level is not, I repeat, akin to having fun. I never heard Michael Jordan saying, "I'm having fun." Jordan was an artist. I do not think that writers should necessarily enjoy the act of writing. It is okay to enjoy the completed work, the finished book; but when you're actually producing a book, writing each page, day after day, year after year, I believe it should be torture. I think that bleeding over each page is normal, or should be considered normal."
I found this particularly interesting because recently when I offered Writer's Digest Press a manuscript about writing, they said that it made writing seem like hard work...and they were after titles that made it seem like fun...I don't totally agree with Talese but if you're writing and you're not finding it "fun"--nothing's wrong, you're doing fine.
