Hey you! Nice to see your work on the front of HN. That said, I disagree with the thrust of your thesis :) I'm a professional writer, it's pretty much my only monetizable skill as well as my passion, and writing first drafts is like pulling teeth. It's arduous and I rarely enjoy it in the moment. Very satisfying when I'm done and get to show off the result, though! I am exactly that cliché about "hate writing, love having written." This is not exactly an uncommon sentiment among writers, either.
For me, I do enjoy writing the first draft, even when I don’t know how or where many scenes will go. It’s definitely hard work, but enjoyable, especially when I get into the moment.
But editing, on the other hand, I don’t look forward to.
Editing is tedious--especially in the later "how did this stupid error make it this far?" stages. But it's definitely easier to start from some sort of foundation for me. That said, this is mostly with respect to editing my own writing. For editing the work of others, I definitely find there's sometimes this uncanny valley where I can't just say "this is trash" but I also can't say this just needs a bit of TLC either. And that's really frustrating because you sort of want to respect the original writer's work, but it really isn't very good.
For me the part that has me pulling teeth is when I know for a fact that something is wrong, but for the life of me I cannot see how to fix it. And with everything I try to do, I'm not honestly sure if the result is better or not. Ironically, this gets harder as your writing gets more polished---there's more to mess up when you change things.
Maybe some day I'll find a way around this, but so far I haven't.
As somebody who writes and codes, I am certainly not typically in a good mood for the entirety of my problem-focused period. Somebody could say that I "hate coding but love having coded", but it's actually very different from the other states we would describe this way. For instance, I code for fun in my free time, instead of only coding for money and prestige, and so I'm getting some kind of intrinsic enjoyment out of it -- even if it's simply the catharsis of solving a difficult problem. I feel almost exactly the same way about writing (although I find writing a lot easier than coding most of the time).
There are a lot of writers (mostly young naifs and beginners) who have fallen in love with the romantic ideal of the tortured artist, and have the completely unrealistic expectation that if they suffer for their art they will inevitably be rewarded with prestige. It's a common, and toxic, mentality. Failing to distinguish the teeth-grinding dubious pleasure of working at the edge of your ability (something familiar not just to programmers and writers but to athletes, gamers, and craftspeople) from egocentric paranoia is problematic, because it risks supporting the former tendency instead of the latter.
This is not to say that writing can't be difficult, but writing is also something that almost definitely does not pay enough to justify doing it despite genuinely hating it! I think if you describe writing as your "passion", then you're coming to it from the right perspective -- plus, you're a skilled enough writer that it's clear you put the work in long before it became profitable. As they say in the Dwarf Fortress community, "failing is fun".
Folks who hate writing but love "being a Writer" -- the crowd who post bookstagram shots of their color-coded shelves -- are not setting themselves up for a fun time on the other hand. You've gotta have a little bit of masochism to survive in any 'creative' job, but if you're spending all day doing something you genuinely hate, only extrinsic rewards like money and the warm embrace of your fans are keeping you afloat. Extrinsic rewards are mercurial.
Of course, I've got a pretty casual perspective on writing. I do some freelance when it interests me, but most of my writing is done for communication first with profit a very minor concern. But my day job is my other passion. The nature of day jobs is that you're required to do a lot of stuff that's boring, stupid, and offensive to your sensibilities. If coding was not a passion, I would have burnt out far harder far sooner.
Comments
Hey you! Nice to see your work on the front of HN. That said, I disagree with the thrust of your thesis :) I'm a professional writer, it's pretty much my only monetizable skill as well as my passion, and writing first drafts is like pulling teeth. It's arduous and I rarely enjoy it in the moment. Very satisfying when I'm done and get to show off the result, though! I am exactly that cliché about "hate writing, love having written." This is not exactly an uncommon sentiment among writers, either.
I’m curious how you feel about editing.
For me, I do enjoy writing the first draft, even when I don’t know how or where many scenes will go. It’s definitely hard work, but enjoyable, especially when I get into the moment.
But editing, on the other hand, I don’t look forward to.
Editing is tedious--especially in the later "how did this stupid error make it this far?" stages. But it's definitely easier to start from some sort of foundation for me. That said, this is mostly with respect to editing my own writing. For editing the work of others, I definitely find there's sometimes this uncanny valley where I can't just say "this is trash" but I also can't say this just needs a bit of TLC either. And that's really frustrating because you sort of want to respect the original writer's work, but it really isn't very good.
The stupid mistakes are easy---just fix them.
For me the part that has me pulling teeth is when I know for a fact that something is wrong, but for the life of me I cannot see how to fix it. And with everything I try to do, I'm not honestly sure if the result is better or not. Ironically, this gets harder as your writing gets more polished---there's more to mess up when you change things.
Maybe some day I'll find a way around this, but so far I haven't.
To me editing still feels chore-ish but to a much lesser extent, and sometimes I'll have fun doing it.
As somebody who writes and codes, I am certainly not typically in a good mood for the entirety of my problem-focused period. Somebody could say that I "hate coding but love having coded", but it's actually very different from the other states we would describe this way. For instance, I code for fun in my free time, instead of only coding for money and prestige, and so I'm getting some kind of intrinsic enjoyment out of it -- even if it's simply the catharsis of solving a difficult problem. I feel almost exactly the same way about writing (although I find writing a lot easier than coding most of the time).
There are a lot of writers (mostly young naifs and beginners) who have fallen in love with the romantic ideal of the tortured artist, and have the completely unrealistic expectation that if they suffer for their art they will inevitably be rewarded with prestige. It's a common, and toxic, mentality. Failing to distinguish the teeth-grinding dubious pleasure of working at the edge of your ability (something familiar not just to programmers and writers but to athletes, gamers, and craftspeople) from egocentric paranoia is problematic, because it risks supporting the former tendency instead of the latter.
This is not to say that writing can't be difficult, but writing is also something that almost definitely does not pay enough to justify doing it despite genuinely hating it! I think if you describe writing as your "passion", then you're coming to it from the right perspective -- plus, you're a skilled enough writer that it's clear you put the work in long before it became profitable. As they say in the Dwarf Fortress community, "failing is fun".
Folks who hate writing but love "being a Writer" -- the crowd who post bookstagram shots of their color-coded shelves -- are not setting themselves up for a fun time on the other hand. You've gotta have a little bit of masochism to survive in any 'creative' job, but if you're spending all day doing something you genuinely hate, only extrinsic rewards like money and the warm embrace of your fans are keeping you afloat. Extrinsic rewards are mercurial.
Of course, I've got a pretty casual perspective on writing. I do some freelance when it interests me, but most of my writing is done for communication first with profit a very minor concern. But my day job is my other passion. The nature of day jobs is that you're required to do a lot of stuff that's boring, stupid, and offensive to your sensibilities. If coding was not a passion, I would have burnt out far harder far sooner.