What is the point in trying and learning new things if you just turn around and forget about them afterward? Hint: the correct answer is none. There is no point in doing such a silly, silly thing.
Today’s assignment is to publish a follow-up post inspired by your post from day nineteen. If applicable, publicize it on a social media.
If you’ll remember, for my day ninteen post I shared one of my favorite writer quotes. For today’s assignment I am going to explain my feelings behind why I believe it is a great quote. In case you’ve forgotten (or didn’t see it the first time), the quote was:
“Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.” – George Orwell
The reason I love this particular quote is because of the raw truth of it and the image that he paints of the author struggling to create even though the process is terrible. This is exactly how I feel when I’m writing. Don’t get me wrong…I love writing, I truly do. But writing a book can be kind of like a woman going through a long, horrible labor; you’re certain that something wonderful is going to come from it, but you have to go through a lot of agony on the way. There are highs and lows, and sometimes it can be so painful that you convince yourself there is no way you can go on. Sometimes exhaustion takes over, and sometimes some unseen power drives you forward, and often you end up asking yourself why you ever allowed yourself to wind up in this position in the first place. And then, when it’s finally over and the book is “born”, you realize that this is only the beginning; now you have to “raise” the fruits of your labor through revisions, edits, beta-readings, more revisions and edits, publishing, marketing, and consumer feedback. Then, when all the horror begins to fade in your memory, you decide that you rather quite enjoyed being a parent/writer, and you wind up putting yourself through the whole thing all over again. It’s the kind of thing that only a crazy person would go through on purpose, but as a parent goes through hell and back for a child, so too does a writer sacrifice for their book, because in the end it’s all about the need to give birth, to create something wonderful.
That is how I feel about writing.
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