Jeremy C Kester

Writing is hard.

Another morning is passing by as the only accomplishment that can be genuinely claimed is that the seat is warmed. The writer showed up to the job and then sat there… blank. Call it writer’s block or whatever, the fact is that one thing is true: writing is not easy.

This isn’t about writer’s block, per se. Correlation could be extracted from the content even though the goal is different.

To the outsider, the person who doesn’t write, it seems easy. The writer is simply sitting down and coming up with stories right? In concept, yes. Doesn’t mean that it’s easy though. If anything, it is the opposite. And I wonder why I am so driven to do it.

Morning after morning I’ve been trying to get up early to sit down in front of both computer and notebook. Once the journaling is done, which itself is sometimes tough to figure out what to write (and who would think that writing in a journal one’s feelings would be tough), then begins the sitting down trying to force out creativity and motivation. To anyone who thinks it works otherwise, that is so only in rare cases.

Most of the time we writers have to grind. Word after word has to be wrenched out, dragged out from the depths of whatever only to produce what we would argue is a steaming pile of manure. Of course it is ample fertilizer for a better piece of art… after far more work.

Part of me hates writing about the struggle as it feels like whining. It feels like I am sitting here looking for sympathy. That’s not the goal. It isn’t even intended to get people to understand what I am going through. What is being chased is the understanding within myself as to what is going on here. It’s to gain the self-realization that it’s OK, that “easy” wasn’t what I signed up for. Or to expect the pile of crap that comes out of my fingertips onto the pixels on the screen. People may pat me on the back and tell me it’s OK, that I am doing a good job, but I need that from myself.

To expect that this feeling will ever go away is a folly. Forever as I write, it is expected that the struggle will come and go, get impossible to overcome and then easy to smash down. The only constant will be that there will always be a struggle to do that thing I love so much… to write.

It isn’t easy to write. And I should not expect otherwise.