Pleasure or Pain?

Ask any writer, and he or she will tell you that writing is hard work.

Sometimes it’s actually painful.

Two well-known writers (whose quotes have circulated among writers and non-writers for years) describe writing as a torture-like process, helping to fuel this notion of writing as painful:

There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein. Red Smith

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

These images of bleeding or cutting one’s self to write, to get at the truth of what one needs to say, can be daunting. If someone had told me years ago that I'd need to shed blood every time I picked up my pen, I’d never have picked up a pen in the first place.

Maybe this notion of writing as painful is why so many people find it hard to face the page.

Images like these make writing sound like a process designed to extract a confession out of the most excruciating kind of pain, and somehow we've come to believe that truth will emerge out of this horrible pain.

But there are writers who feel differently about the process.

Writing isn’t torture, nor does it involve cutting or bleeding. Instead, it’s a process of joyful discovery.

Here’s what one writer has to say:

Writing became such a process of discovery that I couldn't wait to get to work in the morning: I wanted to know what I was going to say. Sharon O'Brien

And another:

The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible. Vladimir Nabakov

And another:

I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions. James Michener

And still another:

If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster. Isaac Asimov

Writing doesn’t need to be painful. It can actually be joyful, bringing the writer (and ultimately the reader) immense pleasure.

The search for truth doesn’t require tools to maim yourself. You don’t need to draw blood. You don’t have to cut anyone, least of all yourself.

Using a pen and paper, or a computer keyboard, you can delve into the unknown realm of your soul.

You are a diver, a mountain climber, a swimmer.

You are an explorer seeking hidden treasure.

There is a chest of riches hidden inside you.

Writing is a way to discover these riches.

At times it may prove a challenging ordeal to discover what’s hidden inside you. But that search can also prove liberating in unexpected ways.

If you’re bleeding on the page, you may want to re-think your approach to the writing process so that it’s not quite so painful, so self-lacerating.

Perhaps a change in your perspective will help you begin to understand your writing process in a different way.

But what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.
George Eliot

For more on writing as pain or pleasure, visit:
http://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/268277-re-writing-pain-or-pleasure
http://scribesisters.blogspot.com/2010/11/writing-pleasure-or-pain.html
http://www.writing.com/main/view_item/item_id/1304056-Pain-and-Pleasure
http://apinchofromance.blogspot.com/2011/03/pleasureor-pain.html
http://whimsywritingandreading.weebly.com/2/post/2011/04/pleasure-or-pain-maybe-a-little-of-both-you-dirty-little-bugger.html