Playing the guitar isn't that hard. In fact, it's one of the easiest instruments to learn to play simply. Anyone with reasonable dexterity can learn to form the basic three or four chords and strum a song after one or two days of practice. If they sing along and it's fun, that's great.
Recuerdos de la Alhambra, or Bach's Bourrée in E minor, to be played properly, may take years of instruction and practice, and even then, to be played well will require extraordinary devotion and talent.
I guess it depends on a persons goals and ambitions whether writing is hard or not. But I will say that with fiction, novels or short stories, say, it's all about the story. That's the main thing. A good story and a competent grammar checker may be all you need.
Back to my music analogy, Bob Dylan wasn't a super great accomplished guitar player, but we loved him for the stories.
Yes, I enjoy Bob Dylan’s lyrics, but in general not so much his music or singing ~ it’s why I generally prefer covers of his songs to the originals.
ReplyDeleteI think we see now that almost anyone can write, and many people have at least one interesting short story to tell. But to keep that going? Eek, there’s the hard part. Fluffing up an idea to create an entire novel that holds the reader’s attention is very hard. Takes a lot of work & commitment. And to get published/popular? Pure fucking luck
This was kind of a Devil's Advocate thing. I think if someone has a good story to tell, and is a clear, competent writer, it can be done, and possibly it's not that hard. On the other hand, like playing the guitar, to be a master is extremely difficult to impossible to achieve. This was inspired by a Reddit post, where, in the "writers" sub-Reddit, everybody is a writer! Even if their posts and comments are riddled with spelling and grammatical errors, sometimes to the point of incomprehensibility.
DeleteYeah, you almost don't want to say it, but Dylan was at best a mediocre guitar player, but almost every time I hear one of his songs, the lyrics inspire me in some weird way to make me want to write something.
DeleteHetty again. Me, I'm at the point where I write to please myself. Can't obsess anymore.
ReplyDeleteTrue. Even if I could sell my writing, (ha) it would be unbearable to write something I didn't find pleasing to myself.
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