The Life of the Mind

Lawrence Kasdan

Seeing (and participating in) a healthy discussion amongst my friends about this quote’s annoying-level. I think it’s only as annoying as the additional meaning you assign to it.

Writing can be an inherently exasperating pursuit. Writers feel a nagging need to write, guilt when they’re not writing, and often frustration when they are. The combination has been a pain in many writer-butts for years, hence the thousands of quotes about it.

Does this fact mean (or this quote imply) that writers have harder lives or are doing more important work than anyone else? Nah. People can commiserate about a pursuit’s difficulty without implying that pursuit trumps all others. I think it’s fair to assume that the implied second half of any “writing is hard” quote is the same as the implied second half of whenever anyone complains about most anything: “…that said, lots of people work in fields and factories, so, I’m a little bit of a wiener.”

(via dangurewitch)

All fair points. My point was not to compare the respective worth of jobs, just to recognize that the word “writer” in the above quote can be replaced with literally any other job. It just takes a person who’s passionate about what they’re doing. They feel the drive, the failure, the homework every night. What caused my eyes to barrel roll in my skull was the quote’s attitude of “It’s a writer thing.” It’s not. It’s an “I want to be good at what I do” thing. 

Yes, there are a thousand writer quotes, because that’s their medium. There are less quotes about the trials and tribulations of lawn care and landscape design because that’s not their medium. But I bet they can trim the FUCK out of some hedges.

To quote Vonnegut once more, “Literature should not disappear up one’s own ass, so to speak.”

And now, a tap dancing raccoon so everyone feels better.

(via cockenblog)

I think you’re finding issue where there isn’t. Kasdan wasn’t claiming non-writers just don’t understand. He was simply speaking for himself, and his own experience. If the lawn care guy (I was one) wants to express a similar sentiment, he’s more than welcome. But that wouldn’t make Kasdan’s sentiment, or any of the other quotes any less true. It’s easy for a blogger to belittle the struggle of a writer, which is a very real struggle. But bloggers and writers are not necessarily the same. Blogging and journal writing and memoir and “self journalism” as I call it, is closer to writing restaurant reviews than it is to writing fiction. And if you’d consider how many lives a popular writer impacts compared to that of a teacher, shocking a notion as that comparison may be, I think they’re equally as entitled to a bit of welching.

(Source: iamachilles)