Torture or fun, writing is just like any passion you follow, or is it?

Is there a “tortured writer myth”? If there is I’m yet to come across, at least in a personal sense. I was just reading this blog post titled The Myth of the Tortured Writer where the writer has tried to bust the myth. Whereas I totally agree that writing doesn’t necessarily have to be a gut-wrenching experience it doesn’t always have to be “fun”. Writing is creativity. Creativity is like a harvest, a growth of plants. Sometimes the land is so fertile and watered that you don’t have to put in much effort, things grow there just like that. It can be fun growing fruits, vegetables, flowers etc. on such land.

But sometimes the land is barren, the sun is hot and there is no water source nearby, and if you want to grow things there, you have to till, you have to make the soil soft, you have to add manure and you have to bring water to your fields. It’s hard work, but if you’ve made a conscious decision to get a harvest from that land, you’re going to get it.

Being a writer I’m a bit biased. Writing is more akin to creating a world and then diving into it whether it is molten lava or pleasantly cold writer. It is a story, and a story has its agony and ecstasy, and this is the beauty of writing.

Having said that, I believe writing-related difficulties and blocks are overrated and needlessly blown out of proportion. Some people are constantly writing, and some are perpetually caught in the cobweb of their mental blocks. Whenever you feel trapped like that, do some reading, especially writers you enjoy reading, aspire to emulate. Write on a subject slightly different from the current topic you’re writing on. Write from a different perspective. You will soon emancipate yourself from the “torture” and start writing as if you’re seamlessly playing music and are enthralled by it.