Truman Capote once said, “Writing stopped being fun when I discovered the difference between good writing and bad and, even more terrifying, the difference between it and true art.”

Each year I hear students say something to the effect that, because they don’t receive that coveted A on an English paper, they are not good writers. Each year concerned parents wonder if their children lack what it takes to write quality papers, and, in large part, they ask because they witness the often excruciating struggle between their children and the topic at hand. Sometimes they read their children’s papers and are struck by the plethora of awkward sentences. Perhaps they think, because it all comes at such a price, that something is wrong--that some skill can be taught to ease the ordeal.

While yes, some students possess innate fluency, most labor. Even those students for whom writing is not a chore find themselves deliberating over words, debating how to structure the sentence, confronting doubt at many turns. The best of them don’t just throw words on the page; they slug out a phrase or two, look to see how it flows from the preceding thought, return back to an earlier passage--the revision is incessant. Quality writing rarely springs forth untrammeled.

As I trawled through the dictionary of quotations, seeking out pithy axioms to better express these thoughts, the most frequent metaphor for this situation was that of giving birth--hardly an endeavor characterized by confidence or ease.

Even this, which is no more than a mere half page single spaced, was a distinctly less than pleasant experience. In order to adequately express these thoughts--and do note the word adequate because even yet my dissatisfaction with the end result suffuses each touch of fingertip to key, and were it not for the pile of papers bearing down on me, I might still rewrite--I found it necessary to delay the entry for several weeks, bake a coffee cake in between the first and second paragraph, jump around the entire passage multiple times, ensconce my cold feet in fresh warm socks, check my email and rebraid my hair.

And now, because it is ever so much more appealing to end with someone else’s words than my own, I shall quote a writer whose magnum opus I’ve never been able to read: “Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins committed in previous lives” (James Joyce).

How do you feel about writing?

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