If you're a writer or want to be one, make sure you read this post by Ken Levine. It's about writers who think everything they do is perfect right out of the typewriter or inkjet printer. They don't rewrite…they don't look at what they've done and consider that just maybe it could be made better.
But I will, of course, quibble with one point. Ken writes…
Kurt Vonnegut…once said something to this effect: When you get a group of writers together usually they'll all squawk about how hard it is to write. And there will be one writer who says it's easy, he loves it, piece of cake. Vonnegut says invariably that will be the worst writer in the group.
I agree kinda with that view but I'm also unimpressed by people who want to be writers, sacrifice everything to become writers, manage to become writers…and then bitch 'n' moan constantly about having to spend long hours writing. There's a line in almost every movie about The Mafia or any organization not unlike The Mafia. At some point, someone says something like, "This is the life we have chosen for ourselves."
There are people in this world who willingly, even eagerly become plumbers and then complain about having to unclog toilets. There are people who dream of becoming lawyers then gripe about having to read all those damned law books. At a party once, I met a guy who said he was "male talent" in porn films and heard him explain what a pain it was to get up every morning and have to go in to be paid to have sex with beautiful women. As if he was only doing it because someone was holding his grandparents hostage or something.
I know why some of us complain about the long, struggling hours of writing. We want to remind others that sitting at the keyboard all day is working. We're not there playing Sudoku.
Okay, you're right: Some of us are playing Sudoku but that's during our breaks from actually writing. We need to sometimes alert others that we're a bit weary and our minds are still back in our stories so we may not be the freshest, most attentive company.
Also, sometimes when your work is being handed to others to perform, direct or evaluate, you feel you should remind them that it took you, a professional writer, five weeks to write that. They ought to not be approaching it with the assumptions that they can come up with a better line in twenty seconds. Maybe you can on occasion but don't be so quick to dismiss those five weeks.
Complaining about having to work hard at writing doesn't mean you're a good writer or a bad writer. It might mean you're an annoying writer and I try to catch myself when I might be sounding like one. Please don't dismiss what I'm saying here. I was up all night writing this.