Praecedo—June 2012
Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.
~Gene Fowler
Writing is hard.
Don’t let anyone tell you any different. It is hard work. It can be frustrating, lonely, exciting, depressing, laborious, quick, and thrilling work. But it is hard work.
And in many ways, it isn’t getting any easier. Writing used to involve getting the words down on paper, redrafting and rewriting, sending it to a publisher and waiting. Now? In the age of print on demand, digital publishing, Smashwords and the Kindle Store, writers can be their own publishers. It is easier than ever to be published.
Which has made it harder than ever to be a writer. You now need to write, rewrite, redraft, edit, proofread, correct, publish, market, publicise, ship etc…
Writing is hard. Try to do all the above, whilst still keeping up with your day-to-day life, and it gets even harder.
Now imagine you have a managing editor who is a complete evil swine a caring professional interested in helping you develop as a writer, who demands asks that you write a series of deeply traumatic soul-searching articles over several months with the aim of destroying developing you as a writer.
Now you know how the writers on Write Anything must be feeling. This month I have asked them to confront their greatest difficulties. And despite this, I don’t appear to be their greatest difficulty! I don’t know whether to be happy, or just a little disappointed…
Speaking of difficulties, we have taken the difficult decision to take a one-month break from the Form and Genre Challenge, which will allow us to catch up on some judging and administrative duties. Normal-ish service will be resumed in July.
