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[Y'all already know the joke the title alludes to, right?]
Composing a bass solo is a lot harder than improvising a bass solo.
The improvisation, being ephemeral, can be held to a lower standard: the occasional not-quite-perfect note or missed opportunity to do something really cool will be forgiven even more quickly than they are forgotten, with the understanding that, "hey, after all, this is being made up on the fly." In general, audiences remember the good notes longer.
The improvisation has a context it can lean on very heavily; the mood of THAT audience at THAT moment, the feel of that place ... And it can incorporate the audience's response instantaneously, so the reaction to one lick can steer the player to make a completely different choice in the next phrase than he or she would have done otherwise. And what might otherwise have been a boring run of repeated sixteenth-notes might be exactly what gives that audience on that day a sense of anticipation, a buildup to the next bit instead of a yawn.
The composition is built away from the audience to be presented to them after it is complete, without that instant feedback, and also without any context that the performer can't re-create from scratch intentionally. And if the performer isn't the composer, the piece has to be interesting enough even without the audience reaction right there for the performer to actually desire to learn it and bring it before an audience later. Boring bits and awkward bits will be noticed. So will clichés.
Composing for an ensemble is a bit different, not being limited to what can be reached by a single pair of hands. And composing for other instruments feels different as well, though perhaps that has more to do with musical genre than choice of instrument -- Celtic dance versus rock, for example. I have to think about (and observe) that aspect some more. But for now, what I'm noticing is that at least for the bass guitar, composing is more difficult than improvising.
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I think improvising is hard. But then, I've never actually composed anything good, so I don't know, composition could be even harder. Or it could just be that the grass is greener on the other side...
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I think I'd stress myself less over a solo in the middle of a larger work, because if I didn't have enough ideas within the theme I could just write a shorter solo and stick to the phrase that I felt really good about. But when I'm aiming to fill a couple minutes, the cool riff isn't enough. I have to sort out what else goes wit' dat. And unless the genre is "trance/meditative/newage", it has to "go somewhere".
There's the added dimensions of writing to another player's strengths and weaknesses instead of my own, and hoping like mad that the person I'm writing this "for" actually even likes it (since even if I come up with something good, it simply won't be to everyone's taste). By the way, do I have any hope of getting you up to the 17th fret if I promise it'll sound cool? That's only 14th position, if you use your pinkie...
Improvising sounds like it ought to be more difficult, in that there's no backspace, apparently no do-over, and not much time to plan. Some people find it very difficult. Composing is definitely more effort than improvising, even when it's less difficult, if that makes sense. And for some people, improvising is ... liberating. Yeah, there's still the pressure to Do Something Great With No Time To Think (modulo the audience's usual desire to see you succeed and willingness to interpret what they hear in accordance with that expectation), but the trick is to (mostly) get your brain out of the way.....
Uh, I just realized how much I want to cram into that paragraph, so I'll try to get around to writing an entry just about improvisation later, instead. For now, this much: some people find composing very difficult and other's don't; some find improvising difficult and/or scary and others don't; composing is more effort even when it's less difficult. To a certain extent there's an upper limit on how difficult improvising can be: above a certain level, it's simply impossible to pull off. The player who can't improvise yet can learn to improvise later, but isn't going to make it work tonight when the bandleader points to them just by sweating more. So it can be harder or easier, but beyond a certain degree of hard it's moot. The composer who gets stuck can struggle for weeks and wear out a few erasers. (And then there's the whole, "this piece I've been working on for three days suddenly reminds me of a Focus tune ... and an early renaissance dance tune ... am I unconsciously ripping off the library in my head, or is this really original?" business. I hate that.)
Personally, I'm generally comfortable improvising, but it can become difficult if I'm trying to do it in a style/genre where I haven't internalized all the undocumented "what makes it sound like that" rules yet, or if I'm improvising harmony along with people I haven't "clicked" with yet and who have very different habits/conventions than I do. Composition ... ranges from "let me write down that hot bit I improvised before I forget it" to "how the $&%# do I get the effect that's in my head?"
*grumble*mutter*whoops*