The Truth about WritersSnips from this excellent article:
We don't spend much time writing. There. It's out. Writers, by and large, do not do a great deal of writing. We may devote a large number of hours per day to writing, yes, but very little of that time is spent typing the words of a poem, essay or story into a computer or scribbling them onto a piece of paper.
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To allow our loved ones to know that we are working when we are supposed to be engaged in the responsibilities of ordinary life would mark us as the narcissists and social misfits we are.
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Indeed, even writers who don't write fiction are engaged in the larger fiction of imitating normal humans whose professional activities are organized into discrete blocks of time.
The article is really very funny and worth a read, especially if you write or love someone who does.
Signed,
--a professional minivan driver
(cartoon credit here)
2 comments:
This is so true! I spend so much time working up to the act of writing-- the research, everything else... sometimes it almost seems that the act of writing is the afterthought.
Finding this freed me of some of the guilt I carry around for "playing" when I "should be" writing.
But you're absolutely right, the actual writing part is not nearly as time-consuming as the planning and researching and preparing part! (Not to mention the selling, promotion, learning, and networking parts.)
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