Good Work Isn't Easy

It is not an easy thing to write. Just recently, as I have been working on a short creative piece for my English class, I have been running into some pretty significant writer's block, and have been reminded for the umpteenth time just how frustrating and challenging this craft really can be. There are a seemingly endless list of difficulties that a writer can face as they make their way through the process of creation: they can struggle to come up with a coherent original idea, lose control on maintaining an interesting trajectory for that idea, fail to find the words to tell a unique tale in a readable way, accidentally write something bloated, accidentally write something far too sparse on detail, unintentionally write something that has been already done in a better way, lose faith in their work halfway through, lose faith upon entering the final editing process, and more. So much more. The process can be deeply discouraging, but in that sense of intense discouragement is where the serious writers are set apart from the tourists and the hobbyists. No, the process is never going to be easy if you really want to do great work. But diving into the craft with all your heart and all your energy will prove rewarding more often than not (if not necessarily every time). That, at least, has been my experience so far, and is the mentality that I would encourage beginning but interested writers to adopt. As I said earlier, even though I am a fairly experienced short story writer, the process can still frequently torment me. In the creation of the piece for my English class, I burned through hours pacing and frantically typing out so many ideas that never led anywhere and ended up deleted, cast away into oblivion. Some could say I wasted a lot of time but that honestly is integral if you want to make sure the thing you eventually run with is truly worth it. And now, by virtue of having tested out so many ideas and having "wasted" so many hours thinking about what to execute, I now feel much better about my current work and what it might become. Nothing about writing is easy, and that is exactly the way it should be, we should not want or expect or demand it any other way. It is supposed to be a challenge, and that is how we grow, and that is how we get better, and that is why the skills learned through creative writer are far more applicable than in exclusively the realm of pen and paper.