Well, many of the aspects of writing are hard. There's countless solitary hours, often late at night or early in the morning when our loved ones are asleep (and we should be), frustration, pacing, writing and rewriting scenes.
It's not a matter of just sitting down and writing a book. If that were the case, I could quit my day job.
I've chosen to use this space to connect with you and bring you into the life of a writer. It's not all tweed jackets with elbow patches and unlit pipes clutched in our teeth as you might imagine (as cool as that sounds). The days of banging out a story on a typewriter and sending it off to be published are long gone. There are literally millions of books written every year, and there are only so many people to buy and read those books.
The act of sitting down and letting a story flow through you is the most exciting time in the life of a book. The author is riding the creative high from bringing characters to life, making them interact, and bringing everything together in a climactic ending. It's an amazing thing to experience that many, many people will never experience. That time is an amazing time, but it is short lived.
Some people take years to write a first draft. Some people less so. I wrote the first draft of Souls Harbor in two weeks, Peripheral took about three, Family tree about two weeks. Shatter, I knocked out over a long weekend. Like I said, it's a wonderful high and you want to ride it as much as you can, but it doesn't last forever.
That's the honeymoon stage. Honeymoons end and you have to go back to the real world.
That's where the hard part begins. There's editing, proofreading, more editing, submissions, rejections, more editing, more rejections, considering that maybe you suck and should give up, more submissions, and if you're good, and lucky enough to get the right story in front of the right person at the right publisher on the right day, you get published.
After years of work and dedication, you're suddenly an overnight success.
Like I said, writing is hard.
-John
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