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The quotation marks around the title question, why is writing hard, should reveal that it’s a question many authors ask. Well, if we believe Google, at least. In any case, this is something I have also seen in private conversations.

To be fair, in such contexts the question is more implicit. That is, people don’t generally ask directly why writing is hard. Still, I have definitely detected such a mindset.

For instance, when I met an acquaintance after two or three years, he remembered I’d told him I was writing a book – that was Apognosis. “I can’t believe it,” he congratulated me, “you’ve written a book!”

I realized he’d thought I was writing my first book. Since I generally don’t advertise about my traditionally published past, people aren’t aware of it. I couldn’t resist teasing him a bit, so I said (which was the truth): “Actually, I’ve written another three since we last spoke”. You should’ve seen his face. The poor guy was looking at me as if I’d just told him I’d squared the circle.

So, why do people think writing is hard? More crucially, is writing hard? The answer is yes, but probably not for the reasons you suspect.

In this post I’ll try to answer why, in my opinion, indeed writing is hard, and why you should care as a writer (and perhaps reader). If our goal is to produce better literature, we need to know why it’s difficult.