That Easy, That Hard and Writing

Neil Gaiman has a saying about writing that's been running through my mind the last few weeks.


It's summer and I'm writing every day. Not killing myself (that comes with editing), but writing consistently, trying to keep it steady, trying to get this goddamn first draft done because it's going to swallow me whole otherwise. And Gaiman's description of the writing process is keeping me going.

Sometimes, I can see the whole story in my head, playing out in all of it's big screen drama (when I write, I write as if I'm watching a film...) and it's fantastic and glorious and so beautiful that it can hurt.

And then I look down at the cursor blinking. Waiting. Writing is about dreaming, yes, but it's also about the work. It's about sitting down in a chair and putting your fingers on the keys and forcing the words to come out, one after another into phrases and sentences and paragraphs and pages. It's about the hours, or the word count or the page count- however you measure out your dedication to the story. It can be fun, yes, but it can also be hell and sometimes I'd rather do anything, just about anything, than sit down in the chair and put one word after another in the hopes that eventually a reader will see in their own mind what I am seeing in mine.

That's what writing is. It's that easy, word after word, and just that hard.