Bindu Wiles' blog: Why is it so difficult to write?

This is interesting (Bindu Wiles answers a reader's questions):

* Why is it so hard to write even when it is the thing I most want to do?
There are endless reasons, and some that are common to all writers and others that are specific to you. I can only answer the ones common to all writers, but I think each writer must answer for herself the specific why’s as to the difficulty of writing. Self-knowledge is an imperative for a writer. It’s my opinion that the extent that we know ourselves is the extent we can know our characters (in fiction), and other people (in non-fiction). You cannot be a really good writer without a whole bunch of looking inward, although people try it all the time, and in my opinion, the result is writing that is shallow or undeveloped and ultimately uninteresting.
Some of the common reasons; (I am a non-fiction writer so therefore am going to address that genre here)
-to sit in a chair alone not speaking to anyone for hour after hour is plain old difficult.
-Grace Paley once said in a workshop I was in that the state that writers need to be in to work, is the state that most people are paying therapists to get out of.
-writing in particular is an art form that creates something from absolutely nothing. We make worlds with little black marks on the page and they have to make sense, be emotional, and touch something universal as well as reveal something personal.
- the level of vulnerability is hard to live with.

Read the full post here.