Trying to write is very much like trying to put a Chinese puzzle together. We have a pattern in mind which we wish to work out in words; but the words will not fit the spaces, or, if they do, they will not match the design.

Me parece que la mayor dificultad estriba en escribir con el estilo adecuado al grado de cultura de nuestra inteligencia y expresar nuestras ideas confusas, nuestros pensamientos mitad sentimientos que son los que reinan en nosotros, cuando todavía no somos, en cierto modo, sino un compuesto de tendencias instintivas. Escribir se parece mucho a intentar resolver un rompecabezas chino. Tenemos en la mente un dibujo que deseamos reproducir con palabras; pero las palabras no encajan en los huecos, o, si encajan, no concuerdan con el diseño. Pero seguimos intentándolo, porque sabemos que otros lo han logrado, y no estamos dispuestos a reconocer la derrota.

It's not the writing part that's hard. What's hard is sitting down to write.

What keeps us from sitting down is Resistance.

Good writing doesn’t come naturally, though most people seem to think it does. Professional writers are constantly bearded by people who say they’d like to “try a little writing sometime” — meaning when they retire from their real profession, like insurance or real estate, which is hard. Or they say, “I could write a book about that.” I doubt it. Writing is hard work. A clear sentence is no accident. Very few sentences come out right the first time, or even the third time. Remember this in moments of despair. If you find that writing is hard, it’s because it is hard.

فمحاولة الكتابة تشبة الى حد كبير محاولة تركيب أجزاء الصورة المكونة للغز

All writing is difficult. The most you can hope for is a day when it goes reasonably easily. Plumbers don’t get plumber’s block, and doctors don’t get doctor’s block; why should writers be the only profession that gives a special name to the difficulty of working, and then expects sympathy for it?

To write simply is as difficult as to be good.

Writing, when all is said and done, is an attempt to understand one's own circumstance and to clarify the confusion of existence, including insecurities that do not torment normal people, only chronic nonconformists, many of whom end up as writers after having failed in other undertakings.

Writing organizes and clarifies our thoughts. Writing is how we think our way into a subject and make it our own. Writing enables us to find out what we know — and what we don’t know — about whatever we’re trying to learn.

I wish I could write. I get these ideas but I never seem to be able to put them in words.

Writing is hard work. A clear sentence is no accident. Very few sentences come out right the first time, or even the third time. Remember this in moments of despair. If you find that writing is hard, it’s because it is hard.

Remember this as a consolation in moments of despair. If you find that writing is hard, it's because it is hard. It's one of the hardest things that people do.

Writing is hard, but I don’t want to kill myself trying to write. Not unless I’m writing a suicide note.

It seems to me that the great difficulty of writing is to make the language of the educated mind express our confused ideas,