Monday 6 February 2012

Why being a writer is hard

Being a writer is not easy, in and of itself. First comes the question - who can categorise themselves as a writer? Do you have to be paid for it? Published? Read? Write with a certain regularity? Ability? In one sense I suppose we are all writers. But I am going to go ahead and work under the premise that writers are those of us who write for an audience.


The hardest thing to do is say something original in an original way. That's what we're all doing isn't it? Trying to say something no-one has said before, in a way that no-one has managed to say it. Originality is the holy grail of writing. How many times have you written a sentence and deleted it because it's a cliché or you think you read it somewhere already?

The truly unique is truly rare. Think about the interesting blogs and articles you read. They all have some unusual perspective or niche interest or style. We are all striving to be unique. It begs the question if any of us has had a single original thought in our lives at all. Or is everything we think and say a recycling of something someone else has thought and read? If that is the case, it becomes harder for humanity to be original as time goes by. Psychologists believe we never truly forget anything we see, hear, read, or experience. Everything is filed neatly somewhere in the unimaginably complex storehouse of the mind, most of it irretrievable but still definitely in there.

That is what is hard about being a writer. Its like standing in a crowded room filled with people all shouting words and hoping ours are different, interesting, worth hearing.

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