Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

(Huh. It's mid-November and I just had to go open some windows because it's warmer outdoors than inside my house. Let's see whether this makes my fingers start working a bit better.)

I hate writing.

I seem to be pretty good at it, if perhaps a bit uneven, but I don't like doing it. Oh, I like having-written, especially when people say nice things about what I wrote ... and sometimes the "words tumble out" kind of writing is fun and makes me feel so clever while I'm doing it ... but the act of sitting down with a clear goal, an idea that I need to communicate, or an assignment, and wrestling the phrases into shape, hearing them creak as I bend them and my own grunts as I strain to do so, being burned by the sparks as I weld a new clause into place; struggling to hoist the bricks of the next paragraph onto the page and painstakingly eyeing the mortar to make sure the thoughts are aligned correctly as I lay them; bearing down on the plane, the rasp, and the chisel as I smooth and decorate the edges of an essay; making the first chip in the blank page I'm about to carve by bashing my head against it ... that part I hate. I think I hate making dozens of passes with finer and finer grades of sandpaper -- editing -- even more. I like having written, but I don't like writing.

When I say I seem to be good at it, that's because I've been tapped to play technical writer many times not because I was available -- I've often had plenty else on my plate, other things I'm good at and enjoy more -- but because without a real technical writer on the team I was the only one the boss trusted to do it well. Or because there have been other people available who could do an adequate job but I was expected to do it best. (Is it any wonder that I value tech writers as highly as I do?) It's also because I wrote a piece of erotic fiction that gave people nightmares. And because I find references to the essays I feel least secure about, describing them as eloquent. (The words-tumble-out pieces are mostly described as poetic and/or amusing when they are praised, and those make me feel good as well, but the ones described as eloquent nearly always take me by surprise.) The thing is, I don't feel like I'm good at writing, because I find it difficult.

I do feel that I'm "good with language" -- there is poet in me -- but not "good at writing". Despite the evidence.

Writing also frustrates me because it is slow. I type quickly. I spout conversational email quickly. Likewise flames and counterflames (an urge I try to keep in check). When a programming task takes a long time, it's because it's a large task, not because it goes slowly -- I see the progress minute by minute. Making music happens at its own speed; learning music doesn't feel slow. The speed of cooking is process-defined, not skill-dependent. But real writing, goal-directed, worry about the quality, "a first draft won't do" writing, is painfully slow. Frustratingly slow. "Mommy, are we there yet?" slow. Slower than anything else I'm good at. And when I delete four paragraphs that I've already rewritten three times, because I've finally realized that there's just no way I'll be able to slide back into the flow of the essay after them even if I do miraculously find a way to make them not inherently clumsy, then it feels like I'm moving backwards.

An essay or a user's manual takes too long already; the thought of a novel or a proper reference book terrifies me.

Have I mentioned that I hate writing?

It's not that I hate work. Well, okay, not entirely anyhow. I can work very hard on a computer program and enjoy doing so. Likewise with music: most of the time it's easy, but when the difficult work comes along -- the six hour rehearsals, the "in over my head" situations, the rewire-my-brain-for-this complexities -- I'm still glad to be making music. And I still know that I'm good at it. And I can finish a performance or listen to a recording, look at a poem, test a program, taste a meal, or see a student's test score, and know that what I have done, easy or not, is good.

But when I write, the works that I feel okay about may or may not elicit comment, but the ones that I never managed to feel satisfied with, the ones "not so much completed as abandoned" because I despaired of making them quite what I wanted them to be, those are the ones that others call good.

Perhaps it is the very fact that those pieces worried me so that makes them good. That my insecurity about them caused me to put in enough sweat, enough attention and frustration and time, to make them better than anything I toss off (pun intended) cockily. Still, the important ones escape because I can no longer stand to have them under my fingers, or because I have run into a deadline, not because I feel I have finished them, so the praise winds up surprising me when it comes.

My head is full to bursting with things I wish to have written. But between not feeling as though I have the time -- because of more pressing tasks, as well as how long writing takes -- and sheer dread of the writing, they accumulate, pressing more and more urgently against the inside of my skull until sometimes I am literally close to tears from the pressure of ideas seeking outlet. Once in a while a few must leave. Unfortunately it is not as simple as opening a hole and allowing them to push themselves out -- oh, if only there were so simple a remedy for this presure as trepanation! Instead, I must create the completed idea outside of my skull, brick by brick, rod by rod, comma by comma, before the copy inside can vanish and the pressure decrease by an iota.

I really hate writing.

To quote the Sheepie (IIRC), "My muse is a bitch."

(Now maybe I've written enough words that I can go work on that damned concerto that's been pestering me for the past two weeks.)