The fact of the matter is that the people who struggle most with writing are drunks. They get hammered at night and in the morning their heads are full of pain and adverbs. Writing is hard for them, but so would golf be, or planting alfalfa, or assembling parts in a factory.
The biggest whiners are the writers who get prizes and fellowships for writing stuff that’s painful to read, and so they accumulate long résumés and few readers and wind up teaching in universities where they inflict their gloomy pretensions on the young. Writers who write for a living don’t complain about the difficulty of it. It does nothing for the reader to know you went through 14 drafts of a book, so why mention it?
On Whining
May 11th, 2006 · 4 Comments
by Booksquare
File Under: Quote of the Week
4 responses so far ↓
Joan Kelly // May 11, 2006 at 11:31 am
That made me fall in love with him. I know he’s very popular so I’m probably late to that party, but still… Thanks for posting this, it totally made my (so far half an hour long) day.
The Happy Booker // May 11, 2006 at 12:24 pm
Too funny. And so perfect. As always, thanks for the link–Wendi
Lorra Laven // May 12, 2006 at 5:28 am
Wonderful post.
l.r.s // May 12, 2006 at 8:16 am
Does Garrison Keillor make for the greatest quoting opportunities, or what! While it’s a little cyinical for my tastes, I have to admit that is one darn funny quote.