Award-winning fantasy writer: "I don't actually enjoy writing"

Blazing Reader,

In the June issue of Locus Magazine, Aurora Award-winning Canadian fantasy writer, Guy Gauvriel Kay, confesses that:

"I don't actually enjoy writing. It's not fun for me. I have to quell murderous impulses towards writers who say, 'I love writing!'"

This surprised me, because I do fall in the "I love writing" category of writers. But now I know that if I ever meet Guy Gauvriel Kay, I should abstain from mentioning any fondness for the craft without adequate methods of self-defence in place.

He explains his frustration:

"I'm always too aware of the space between what I want to achieve and what I'm capable of doing as a fallible human being. Writing, for me, is working as hard as I can to reduce the gap between what I would like to produce and what emerges."

For whatever reason, I feel the opposite. I've found that as long as I keep on working on a piece, eventually it will exceed my expectations.

Kay does, however, admit that:

"But once in a while, it's fun, and often, these are funny scenes. I labour under the sad delusion that I'm funny. I like funny people, and I like being with amusing friends... and writing funny scenes, characters, bits, is the fun part of the writing process... If one character skewers another with a line of banter, I can enjoy writing that..."

Maybe this is part of the reason I enjoy writing so much. Readers often comment on the humorous banter between the characters in my novels. If I'm going to spend hundreds of hours writing and editing character dialogue, then they better be amusing.

John C.A. Manley

PS For a good example of the humorous banter in my novel, Much Ado About Corona, check out the "She's a... Conspiracy Theorist!" book trailer on YouTube or BitChute.

John C. A. Manley is the author of Much Ado About Corona, All The Humans Are Sleeping and other works of philosophical fiction that are "so completely engaging that you find yourself alternately laughing, gasping, hanging on for dear life." Get free samples of his stories by becoming a Blazing Pine Cone email subscriber.