Writing is difficult

Writing is difficult especially for me. I sometimes wish I was one of those people who can just sit down with pen in hand and write. I have to make a conscious effort. I have to be in the right mood or else I write absolute rubbish or I can’t write at all. It is at these times, during the writer’s block apparently unique to me, that I appreciate how difficult the career of ‘author’ is. At these times I wonder how long JRR Tolkien sat pondering his writing ability before writing The Lord of the Rings. Did he write it in one go? A chapter a day? A line a day? Did it take him decades to get it just the way he wanted it? And then I wonder why I’m even subconsciously comparing myself to the writer of one of the most successful stories of our time.

I also think about JK Rowling. Before anyone says, anything, I won’t deny that I love Harry Potter. Wander off to my myspace profile and you will find that it is listed first in my Favourite Books section. (You’ll also find that I love Justin Timberlake and Romeo + Juliet, ooh-er!). I have just finished rereading the Order of the Phoenix, I blubbed all the way through thanks to its rather trangic ending and after wiping away the last few tears and closing the book I raced over to the computer, knocking my net-obsessed sister to the wayside and preordered the Half Blood Prince. I’m now counting the days until it arrives (25 at the moment) with tickers on my MSN, my myspace and one soon to be added to my LJ (that’s Livejournal to you). I’ve gone off on a tangent…I think about JK Rowling and half of me understands how difficult it must be to write a book that tops your last while being mother to three children under 12. Just finding time to write that isn’t 3.20am must be a godsend. But then the other half, the selfish self serving part of me, wants her to get to her computer and get to it now. And not only that, she must have produced the seventh book within three months of the release of Half Blood Prince. Right now, I’m feeling sympathetic towards her though. But I’ll stop there before I babble even further about my deep seated love for Harry Potter.

Back to writing, it took me ages to get round to writing this article. Attempts at all sorts of topics before settling on one that actually meant something to me. Not that the other subjects weren’t important to me in their own way, just that this one was truly the way I was feeling and hot how I thought I should feel in order to produce an at least partially interesting piece of writing.

It’s also a good topic because I am coming to the stage children around the world look forward to and then dread as soon as they reach it. Where I realize the ‘what do you want to be when you grow up’ answers I gave as an eight year old. I am, believe it or not, choosing what I want to do with the rest of my life. And for what feels like the first time, there are so many options. If I really wanted to, I could become a doctor. But I don’t want to. But I could if I wanted to! That’s the scary thing: I can do whatever the hell I want. I have yearned for this throughout my childhood and now when it comes to it, I can’t do it. There are too many options and too many are appealing in their own little ways. I once read a book about a village in which, at age 13, teenagers of the village shuffle into a hall and are told what they will do. Nurses, teachers, doctors…they are all carefully allotted a career the elders (it was a strange book) think is best for them. At the time of reading I was horrified. These poor kids being forced into occupations they might not enjoy. That was a mere four years ago. Now, I would kill to take the place of one of those kids. Someone saying, ‘here Trish, a career just for you’ sounds like divine inspiration to me.

So maybe I’ll be a writer. Maybe I’ll spend my life writing about how difficult writing is. Maybe.

ADD-ON: This article was written a month ago, when roses were still red and life was still wonderful. Then, in the last days of the countdown to the release of Half Blood Prince (HBP), things went wrong for me. The pre order was cancelled mysteriously with three days to go. We (I roped my aforementioned net obsessed sister in on the deal) called the company and sorted everything out. It turned out there was a bit of a misunderstanding between us and the Terms and Conditions. Then on the day the book was supposed to be courieried to the house, they tell us that we live in a ‘red zone’ and that the book will only arrive on Saturday. To top the cake, I open PT and someone has posted the spoiler in a thread that has absolutely nothing to do with Harry Potter. I eventually got hold of the book at a local bookstore and had read it all by Sunday afternoon. Then I went to PT and condemned all those who spoiled the book for others to hell. Damn, that was fun.

Anyway, the book was extremely sad and I cried even worse than when reading OotP (Order of the Phoenix, duh!). But I won’t reveal what happens in the book because I am civilized. Good luck on holding back the tears to all that read it.

By Trish