“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
― Ernest Hemingway
I bet you heard of Hemingway. Who doesn’t, right? Like the dead man once said, writing is nothing. That’s exactly what I thought. Writing is nothing at all and by all odds, it is not an arduous task. It’s just a caricature of language in a textual form. But, I wouldn’t say writing is a very easy task either. Picture this. You are sitting in front of your desk. A blank sheet of paper and a pen are given to you. You are required to write something. Time’s ticking. You are probably going to say “What am I suppose to write?” or “Where do I begin?” Trust me, these questions is so common that you can’t dodge them. I doubt each and every one of you thinks the same way. In fact, writing can be quite thought-provoking and finicky. I bet a good deal of your brain cells are diminishing with every second of thinking, learning and reasoning while you are writing.
Unlike speaking, writing is a process where you need to center on the grammatical and structural. In writing, any idea must be supported with specific reasons or details. It involves a broad horizon of cognitive, thinking skills, abstract thought, motor, linguistic, each with its own assign tasks that help shape the writing process. Are you still with me? If you view writing in a much simpler perspective, writing is merely letters or symbols. Okay let me put it this way, see the title of my blog? Well, just like the phrase says, writing is like a cauldron of spells. All you need is the right ingredients of vocabulary, grammar, structure, and organization. Stir up all the props in the cauldron until you see big blobs of bubbles and the spell is done. Besides, writing is made up of atoms of feelings, memories, thoughts and imaginations. I like how Einstein’s view on imagination. He quoted “Logic will get you from A-Z; but imagination will get you everywhere.” Have you ever read a book where the characters are so alive that they might come crawling out from the depths of a book? That’s a chef-d’oeuvre of a writer. Writing is not toilsome nor easy. Imagine yourself as a puppeteer. You control the marionette (which represents the characters) that is in your story. You maneuvered them throughout the play with a good story plot. Make them as lively as they can be and you’ll be surprised at the reaction of the audience.
Anyway, “is writing an arduous task?” I got to say it is neither arduous nor easy. It depends. Some people might find it easy when it comes to writing. Picking up a pen or a pencil and start writing like there’s no tomorrow. But what about people who find writing a very difficult thing to do? They couldn’t find the right words and they are beating their brains just to find ways to explain their writing. So you see, different people have different views regarding whether writing is arduous or not but to me, I’m on the neutral side of the PH paper.
A Cauldron of Spells. 