June 11, 2015 Danielle Vincent

I made writing painless and easy WITH THIS ONE WEIRD TRICK

I've spent a lot of time working on how to write, and the only thing I've learned in my 30 years of focused practice is that it only gets harder the more you practice.

Why do so many highly practiced writers talk about how hard it is? As I was painfully slamming my eyeballs against my keyboard trying to leak brain fluid into a blog post, I had a revelation: The more you practice, the harder it is.

Want to know how to make writing easy? DON'T DO IT.

I stumbled across this lovely piece of advice that Neil Gaiman had for a writer who struggled to get his ideas down on paper:

"Write the ideas down. If they are going to be stories, try and tell the stories you would like to read. Finish the things you start to write. Do it a lot and you will be a writer. The only way to do it is to do it.

I’m just kidding. There are much easier ways of doing it. For example: On the top of a distant mountain there grows a tree with silver leaves. Once every year, at dawn on April 30th, this tree blossoms, with five flowers, and over the next hour each blossom becomes a berry, first a green berry, then black, then golden..." (he continues here)

Hemingway famously said, "There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed."

Years ago, I wanted to be a writer. I even quit my job and made business cards that said "writer" on them. Do you know how much writing I got done? NONE.

AND IT WAS A PIECE OF CAKE.

Being a professional writer was the easiest three months of my life.

But then I had to get a real job, because I wasn't really a writer, it was just what I told people at cocktail parties.

Now, I write a lot. If I don't write, I starve. Even though I'm not directly paid for my writing, I am always writing. Not only do I write all the descriptions and blog posts here, I write for our wine blog. And as the days pass and I accumulate more connected words to my name, I can tell you with 100% certainty: