January posting meme: writing, the easy and the difficult

[hedda62]

enemyofperfect asked: What's a part of writing that comes easily to you, and what's one that's difficult? (Does it depend how ease and difficulty are defined?)

It's a good day to answer this (briefly) because I am writing, and therefore the easy and the difficult (which I think speak for themselves in definition, though there's a sliding scale) are laid out in front of me and tugging me in and out of the file.

Things I find relatively easy:

1) Stopping in the middle of a sentence for twenty minutes while I research something. Okay, that's a snippy answer, but I'm at ease with deciding when to research, how long to research for, what to look for, and how to use it when I go back to writing, which is not a small thing.

2) Usually, dialogue and character interaction. Voices in the broad sense and the narrow one.

3) Glomping on to metaphors and torturing them half to death.

4) Rhythm, sentence construction, word choice. Actually, those are all hard, but I enjoy doing them.

5) Editing. Well, easy-ish.

Things I find hard:

1) Plot, but I'm getting better all the time. Pacing, ditto.

2) Keeping a mental picture of all the characters on stage at once, and using them in active ways.

3) Remembering to put in the physical details that make writing pop. Smells, tastes, the way things feel when you rub your cheek against them.

4) Shitty first drafts.

5) Stopping when it's not going well.

And heh, you asked for one thing in each category, but limiting myself is something else I'm terrible at.