[RyanMcGreal]

At the risk of disagreeing with the great Charles Bukowski, this is defeatist bullshit. I doubt there's a writer alive who has never had to struggle to put words on the page; who hasn't had to edit and revise and throw out and rewrite to produce something worth reading; who hasn't plodded through the writing process thinking "This is rubbish" only to go back and look over it and realize that it has added up to something good.

Writing is hard. There's no need to make it harder by instilling a false, romantic sense that writing which doesn't spring fully formed from the writer's forehead isn't worth putting onto the page.

[hugh3]

A contrasting perspective from Douglas Adams: "Writing is easy. All you have to do is stare at a piece of blank paper until your forehead bleeds."

[pigbucket]

I agree with every word of this, despite Shakespeare's friend Ben Jonson saying: "I remember, the players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare that in his writing (whatsoever he penned) he never blotted out line. My answer hath been, would he had blotted a thousand. Which they thought a malevolent speech."