I recently read an essay by David Gessner in the New York Times Magazine’s college issue titled “Those Who Write, Teach.” Gessner is a creative writing professor who has also written six books, and in the essay he describes the experience of forgoing (mostly) the intensity of full-time writing for the more moderate life of academia. Although he makes sure to explain that he loves being a teacher, he still feels like teaching strips away some of the rawness of being a writer:

Even if we grant that you can be as original within the university as up in your garret, we must concede the possibility that something is lost by living a divided life. Intensity perhaps. The ability to focus hard and long on big, ambitious projects. A great writer, after all, must travel daily to a mental subcontinent, must rip into the work, experiencing the exertion of it, the anxiety of it and, once in a blue moon, the glory of it. It’s fine for writing teachers to talk in self-help jargon about how their lives require “balance” and “shifting gears” between teaching and writing, but below that civil language lurks the uncomfortable fact that the creation of literature requires a degree of monomania, and that it is, at least in part, an irrational enterprise.

I found myself reacting in a couple of different ways to his essay. I have a longstanding distrust of the stereotype of the writer as a tortured  artist; I feel like it’s romanticizing to an unnecessary degree what is a lot of hard work. That stereotype also made my parents (and lots of other parents too) declare that being a writer was an unrealistic goal and a waste of my time.

And I hate it when people call me an “artist.” No, I say, I am not. I bristle at it. I don’t want to be associated with the idea of a moody, temperamental narcissist who relies on flashes of inspiration to create things that nobody without an advanced degree in semiotics can understand. And besides, I’ve been a “journalist” for several years now; I find my inspiration, I insist, in deadlines. (And honestly, I’ve never found a more effective antidote to writer’s block than a deadline.)

On the other hand, I admit that some of what Gessner wrote also resonated with me:

Before I became a professor, I managed to work full time as a writer, and I distinctly remember the experience of feeling angry right before I began turning fully to beginning a new book. Just who or what was I angry with? Anything or anyone who got in the way of my work. This may not have been a balanced way to be in the world, but in retrospect I can see what I was doing, and while my behavior wasn’t rational or “good,” it may have been necessary. I was clearing the ground — creating the life “with a broad margin” as Thoreau put it — to try something that would take all I had.

Yeah, I thought, I get that. When I get to the heart of what I’m writing, I have definitely cleared a wide path around me, divorcing myself from social obligations, household chores, etc., even closing the door on people I love because I don’t want to be disturbed. It makes me feel euphoric to be completely alone with my work. Euphoric. And generally speaking, I love going out and meeting people, so this is clearly a sign of some sort of mental disturbance.

The essay also got me to thinking about a conversation I had with a good friend of mine recently about her writing. She’s in a writers’ group that gets together regularly to critique each other’s work and to support each other, which I think is a wonderful thing. But she confessed to me that though she loves plotting out story lines and developing characters, she hates the act of writing. I said something to the effect of, “Yep, writing is hard.” And it is.

I am reminded of one of my favorite quotes about writing, from Gene Fowler (who, I learned through Wikipedia, was a journalist in the early 20th century who interviewed Buffalo Bill Cody):

“All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.”

That quote always cracks me up because it does perfectly evoke the feeling I’ve had of squeezing sentences out of my brain. And yet,  even though writing is hard, I don’t think either Fowler or Gessner would say that they dislike writing. I think that writing is quite difficult, but at the same time, I love it. It’s something I have always done (although I hope my juvenilia never makes it into public) and have always loved.

And it makes me think: If you don’t love writing, the act of bringing all those story lines and characters into life, then it’s not worth the effort. A lot of people say they want to be writers, but they might love the idea of being a writer more than the actual act of writing.  I think they love that idea because of the myth of the writer, alone in her garret, possessed by an incendiary thought, pouring words of genius onto paper. (This is followed by adoration from a legion of readers after publication, which grants the writer the right to become an eccentric recluse living in a house on a cliff by the sea.)

But it’s not like that. First you’ve got to sit there, in that chair, and squeeze out those words. Sometimes they come in a flood, sometimes they come in a trickle. And it does take, I suppose, a particular kind of personality to get any enjoyment out of that. If you’re not that kind of person, why subject yourself to the torture?

If what’s actually going on is a deeply rooted fear that those story lines and characters will never bloom on the page and you’re just going to ruin them and never be able to do it successfully, thereby making the act of writing akin to having your wisdom teeth pulled with no anesthesia, all I can say is: Jump in. You’ll never learn how to swim by staying on the shore.