So I guess writing does not get easier?

As depressing as this might be, I think it is important to draw a distinction here.

While the actual work – the writing itself – may not get easier, I believe that getting attention for what you write can get easier.

For example, while Stephen King may struggle with a sentence just as much today as he did 20 years ago, today he has much less difficulty getting people to like his books – and buy his books.

I believe the same thing goes for blogging.

My best, most articulate, post ever may only get so much attention.

But if Tim Ferriss posted the exact same thing, millions of people would see it.

It boils down to the size of your platform.

This is why, when writers who are just starting out ask me when it gets easier, my answer is never. It never gets easier. I don’t want to scare them, so I rarely say more than that, but the truth is that, if anything, it gets harder. The writing life isn’t just filled with predictable uncertainties but with the awareness that we are always starting over again. That everything we ever write will be flawed. We may have written one book, or many, but all we know—if we know anything at all—is how to write the book we’re writing. All novels are failures. Perfection itself would be a failure. All we can hope is that we will fail better. That we won’t succumb to fear of the unknown.

-Dani Shapiro, Still Writing

What a writer needs is the same thing that an only child has grown accustomed to:

A little bit of solitude, and a little bit of space.

This looks like nothing but a lifestyle to me though.

For a writer needs a writing life.

Spending the day reading and writing, taking the dog for a walk, maybe taking a nap, maybe a mid-day shower – nothing much sounds better.

This Danish aristocrat had it pretty good too though.

Virginia Wolf said that all a writer needed was a room and money.

I have no idea how some writers work in newsrooms.

We may be halfway through a novel, an essay, a story, or a memoir or we may be nearing the finish line on a piece that has taken us years. But wherever we are in our work, we have never been exactly here, today. Today, we need to relearn what it is that we do. We have to remind ourselves to be patient, gentle with our foibles, ruthless with our time, withstanding of our frustrations. We remember what it is that we need. The solitude of an empty home, a walk through the woods, a bath, or half an hour with a good book—the echo of well-formed sentences in our ears. Whatever it takes to begin again.

-Dani Shapiro, Still Writing