"I want to be a writer... but I hate writing"
On the newsgroup that I call home, the usual discussions turned up some interesting statements. People who if not stated outright then certainly implied that they were writers or wished to be writers are now on record that they enjoy the planning part of the game, and the editing part of the game, but they "choke on the middle
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When we lived in Africa, we had bougainvillea bushes. Bouganivillea TREES.
One of them grew and twined along one of the pillars of the pergola on our patio, and it grew like the proverbial Topsy, and it covered the pergola and then started to take over the roof. WHich meant that my dad would occasionally climb up there with a pair of long-handed shears and a pair of heavy-duty gloves, and hack at the branches lying on the roof, and toss them down with cries of TIMBER! and it was mre than your life was worth to be standing anywhere that those thorny branches might chance to fall. My job was to gingerly pick them up and pile them out of harm's way - because, if you have never seen a mature bougainvillea bush, you may not realise that the branches have thorns that are made of iron and can pierce two inches of rubber sole without any problem whatsoever. You didn't want to be stepping on one of those things inadvertently.
Another bougainvillea grew in the corner of the yard, and spread out along the tops of the fence in either direction. It was the best barbed wire fence you could ever hope for, any burglar stupid enough to try and climb that would get so comprehensively impaled that he would have to be taken off with the jaws of life. That one, too, had to be trimmed before it took over the garden space in front of it, and it had a nasty habit of reaching out and GRABBING you with those thorns, and while you were extricating yourself from grab 1 you were leaving yourself open for grabs 2 through twenty seven and after a while you needed a second pair of hands just to get YOU out of there alive.
The point I am trying to make is this - those bougainvilleas were a giant pain in the neck. But ONLY WE WERE ALLOWED TO SAY THAT. They were our bougainvllieas. Anyone else making snide commentary about them would have probably been told to go and mind their own business.
We grumbled and caviled about the thorns to each other, but we dutifully trimmed and shaped, adn we were rewarded every year with masses of red or purple blooms which made the whole place blaze in the sunshine.
It's the same with writing. If you don't have your eye on the prize, it might seem it's all like hacking through thorns. But the thorns are part of the same plant that bears the flowers. You simply cannot say that you hate them, not without hating the whole thing.
And I suspect that a quote such as the one you've produced above is the product of someone who's just been trimming his "bougainvillea". And still loves it with a blind passion even though he is bleeding from deep gashes and limping from the punctures the thorns left in his tender feet.
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