Writing is Hard, But Makes Good Reading

Screenshot courtesy of YouTube

“It’s easy to make things look hard, but hard to make things look easy.” Helene Lagerberg

I am a huge soccer fan. I especially love to watch the US Men’s National team play. At this past summer’s Copa America tournament, Lionel Messi, one of the greatest players of all time, placed a perfect free kick in the upper 90, just beyond USA goalkeeper Brad Guzan’s fingertips.

As a master on the ball, Messi is so enjoyable to watch because he makes hard skills look effortless. Watching the replay, you can imagine yourself stepping and doing the same thing. However when watching this spectacular shot, you don’t see the years of hard work and practice, the lifetime of training that preceded his shot.

I Could’ve Written That
Writing is also a skill that when done well, readers say, ‘I could’ve written that.’ But while stringing words together might be easy, doing it really well is hard. And writing something spectacular is rare and requires years of practice and the equivalent of the writer’s blood, sweat and tears.

No one sees the lonely hours where the writer toils away, writing things they don’t care about for clients who pay peanuts. Their years of repetition and hidden travail goes unnoticed. And like Lionel Messi who makes his on-field skills look so easy, the most skillful writers pour their heart and soul into their works to make them read effortlessly.

As Nathaniel Hawthorne said, “Easy reading is damn hard writing.”