" Not, I hasten to say, that writing is ever all that hard. Beware of writers who tell you how hard they work. (Beware of anyone who tries to tell you that.) Writing is indeed often dark and lonely, but no one really has to do it.

Yes, writing can be complicated, exhausting, isolating, abstracting, boring, dulling, briefly exhilarating; it can be made to be grueling and demoralizing. And occasionally it can produce rewards. But it’s never as hard as, say, piloting an L-1011 into O’Hare on a snowy night in January, or doing brain surgery when you have to stand up for ten hours straight, and once you start you just can’t stop. If you’re a writer, you can stop anywhere, any time, and no one will care or every know. Plus, the results might be better.

-- Richard Ford, Writers on Writing "

― , Writers on Writing: Collected Essays from The New York Times