Well, do they? I think so. But there are a lot of interesting things to say about why this is the case. How often have you heard someone say “Oh, I’d love to write a book. How hard can it be?” Moreover, readers will often criticize a book they didn’t like by saying how they think they could do better. But could they? Can anyone just start writing and create a real cohesive, engaging story?
Why do people underestimate the task?
A couple of years ago I was being interviewed for the role of writer at a company I was excited to get the opportunity to work for. The interviewer put it to me in a way that made sense, and right away I knew she understood the nature of writing. She told me that writing is hard labor and that she respects that writers need adequate time and freedom to complete tasks. I’d never thought about writing being hard labor before that instance, but it got me thinking about the job in a way that I hadn’t thought about it before. Writing was hard labor, I began to think. After writing for hours a day, pausing to think, but otherwise, fervently typing or writing away—how could it not be?
People underestimate the difficulty of writing a novel because they’ve never done it before. And generally speaking, this is what people do. If they don’t understand something, if they’ve never tried it before, they tend to think that it can’t be that difficult. How many times have we watched someone do something and thought it would be easy to do the same thing? Take a sport for example. Things are rarely as easy as they appear.
But what about writing specifically? I think that writing is glamorized in a way that other professions aren’t. We’d all like to be able to write a beautiful novel and sell it and become rich and famous. But the reality is that for most of us that could never happen. And not just because it isn’t easy to just write quality stories consistently, but because there are lots of other factors at play.
Does it really matter?
No, it doesn’t matter that some people underestimate how hard it is. But the next time you hear someone say that they’re going to write a novel, challenge them to commit. If anything, you could motivate them to do it and maybe that’s just what they’re missing—motivation.
Sometimes, it does irk me that people act like writing a book is easy. Everyone wants to do it until they actually start. Of the people that do start, most of them will give up. Part of being a writer isn’t just having the skill, it’s about being persistent and determined. All these qualities are necessary to finish a polished manuscript, in my view.
Maybe I’m cynical, but being a published author is just a fantasy for most people. It sounds like a nice idea, but as soon as they get a taste for the amount of work needed they turn away. But the same thing goes for a lot of other things as well. Not everyone could become a lawyer, a doctor, a professional athlete, an artist, a plumber, a nurse, a chef, etc. I certainly couldn’t!
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