Garrison Keillor to me: Get over it, already

[pegkerr]

I have sort of a hard time not taking this personally. Garrison Keillor says that writers who gripe that Writing is Hard (and you all know that I've bitched plenty about being blocked in this journal before) should just get a grip and knock it off. Writing is hard. Get over it.

Writers, Quit Whining. Spare us the self-involved moaning over the agonies of your art. Writing is no harder than anything else, and the complainers should can it.

Ouch.

Thoughts?

Comments

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

I think he's absolutely right that writing is no harder than anything else--it's just hard in different ways. Or to use my favorite quote about writing (from Red Smith): "Writing is easy. You just sit down at a typewriter and open a vein." (I got that one from Denny Lien, as I remember; he agreed with it, and so do I.)

And I think Garrison has a right to be tired of writers whining--if he applies it to every kind of work. That is, if he thinks no one should complain about their work, well, that's his preference and it's his right to say so. I tend to agree with him that some artists--not only writers--do tend to "self-involved moaning over the agonies of" their work in a way that, for example, police officers and emergency room doctors do not.

[joelrosenberg.livejournal.com]

We've clearly known different sorts of cops and ER doctors.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

Probably.

However, in my experience the average cop or ER doc has a bit more exposure to other people's agonies, of sundry and horrible kind, than the average writer, and tends to be more world-weary and/or cynical than whining.

[jemyl.livejournal.com]

Don't kid yourself! I've known plenty ER docs, paramedics, EMT's, cops and firefghters, both pro and volunteer who can bitch and whine with the best of them, and do so. It is part of what they do to diffuse tensions and control their emotions.

Generaly speaking...

[joelrosenberg.livejournal.com]

... and certainly with some exceptions, I find that cops and physicians-who-necessarily-lose-a-lot-of-patients-under-unpleasant-circumstances (ER docs, oncology, etc.) tend to become fairly blase about other folks' troubles, but not their own. I think it's probably a function of the job, and burnout among those sorts of folks isn't unknown.