writing is hard work

Does anybody else sometimes find writing such hard work that you can only spend an hour or so at a go – get a paragraph or two written and then leave it until next time?

Obviously I have times when an essay just pours out easily, but a lot of times it’s a real struggle. At the moment I am trying to write a personal essay about my experience with lip and it is proving most difficult. I think because I’m still so emotionally here – no distance from the subject and hard not to be deadly earnest.

First I wrote what came more naturally, which was more sort of stream-of-conscious and artistic. That took a couple of weeks to write and is only a rough draft. Now I’m working on a more traditional essay, seeing as I don’t know that the other one works, and this is even more difficult. There’s so much to say. How pick out the bits that will be interesting to a reader and how to get enough across without going into too much detail? How to get the personal side across without sounding young or like an inexperienced writer? It’s hard!

But I try to take it a paragraph at a time.