Writing is Hard Work Series: Part One: Why Do People Think that Things will be Easy? Part One

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This is a continuation of the “Writing is Hard Work Series.” Read the introduction here.

The main problem is that people always assume that everything is easy. Now, when I “always,” I don’t actually mean all the time, but a good portion of people do believe that everything is easy. I personally have never thought that, and assume that everything will require a lot of work, time, effort, etc., but I can completely sympathize with people who think that things will be easy.

They don’t think that because they don’t want to do work, but because there are so many things on the outside which tell them that everything will be a walk in the park. Here is my quick list with some explanations:

1. They want Instant Gratification

Comparatively to writing, almost every job, even in this tough economy, is amazingly safe.

Aside from jobs which aren’t the average (CEO, stock broker, blogger, etc.) you work a specific amount of time, you get paid a specific amount of money; you get a specific amount of benefits, vacation time, etc.

However, a writer’s job is never safe.

Although I do say never, there is, of course, always the exception.

Obviously a writer like Gordon Korman has a job that is 100% secure, for the reason that he’s established, and he’s got enough popular books out that even if he didn’t write any more, he would probably still make enough money. In fact, with the millions of copies he’s sold, he could probably have a pretty nice retirement.

However, people like Gordon are not average. He is viewed as one of the best writer’s ever for a reason, and that’s because he’s better than the average writer. So, of course he will have a lot more security than the average (who may be you).

I have talked to my Aunt, who I am currently closing a guest post deal on for this blog, who used to be a major editor in New York City. One time we were having an editing meeting and chatting about books, and she stated something along the lines of “I used to get fifty books a day to read and decide to publish and most days I would only choose one, maybe two.”

Just to make it sound brighter for you, we’ll say that the number is one and a half, although in my opinion it’s probably closer to one.

That would mean that just 3% of books are published.

Even that may be a little generous, since I doubt that all of the books that she chooses actually go the whole distance to being published.

That is definitely a testament that writing is hard work, because being rejected 97% of the time can obviously frustrate a person.

You may have work hard and take many hours to write book upon book upon book without getting anything published, so if you’re looking for instant gratification—which most people think they deserve—this isn’t it.

2. They are Impatient

People believe that in America (where I’m writing this), people are weird. They are stupid, immature, loud, and fat.

While I’m not in a position to defend my home country right now (having never gone out of it), I will take a guess that there is a reason that an important thing wrong with people isn’t there.

In fact, it is probably one of the biggest problems known to man, although this one can’t be fixed.

It is impatience, and I’ve heard a lot of complaints about the people here in the states, but never once have I heard anyone say that American’s are impatient.

Since being impatient is certainly not desirable (I’ll talk about that a little later), I would guess that haters of America would be sure to throw as much dirt at us as possible, and the fact that impatience isn’t one of those things that I hear all the time says to me that it is extremely likely that people in all countries are impatient.

So, why is impatience undesirable?

The reason that impatience is a terrible trait is because when people have that impatient feeling (yeah, you know what I mean, although, again, I’ve never actually had it), they just don’t care; they want to get it over with.

This forces people to make quick and unwise decisions, which is obviously not good.

People get impatient mainly when they are bored, or another way of saying it is that they want ACTION!

However, things in life usually take a while, and writing is definitely no exception.

Being a writer is one of the opposites of action since authoring an effective action/adventure book takes very careful planning, which I’ll talk about below. To many people, this planning is as unexciting as can be, and if you are too impatient, then writing a book perhaps may not be for you.

You can, of course, still write, though. It may just be something quicker and shorter, like blogging or writing short stories.

I will finish up this sub-series of the series tomorrow with the third point, so to get it, subscribe to my feed or e-mail me at johnstondaniel4@gmail.com for daily e-mail updates!

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