This week, I heard an interview with bestseller and Pulitzer Prize winner Jhumpa Lahiri in which she noted that “Writing is hard.” She’s not the only writer to say that. I think every writer who has ever been published has uttered that sentence in an interview. I probably have as well. But it’s not true. Writing is not hard. No one dies if a writer’s finger slips, the way someone could if a surgeon’s finger slips. Writers don’t climb poles in the pouring rain to jigger electrified wires so that some poor person’s power can be restored. Writers never risk life and limb to type a sentence. (At least in this country.) So why do writers make this false statement? I used to think we … Read entire article »